Edible flowers are both beautiful and functional. So many flowers are edible, from nasturtiums, pansies, and violets, to perennial herbs like rosemary, sage and chive. The effort you make to plant and cultivate them will reward you both in the garden and on the plate.
The burst of color from edible flowers to garnish a dish is common, especially in the Italian alpine regions of Friuli and Alto Adige. The pop of color you get from violets or nasturtiums sprinkled in a salad or served on a cheese board is a joyful alpine expression! A little further south, acacia and elder flowers are a springtime treat in the regions of Veneto and Lombardia. The acacia (aka black locust) trees are in bloom now in Italy and the US and line the roadways with their full white boughs. And everyone who has been to Italy knows that fried zucchini flowers are a summer staple. Plant zucchini now for flowers all summer long.
We have really been enjoying the chive flowers this spring, sprinkled on soup or in salads. The slight oniony bite gives an unexpected lift to so many dishes. Plant chives now and you will have flowers next spring. Rosemary flowers are delicious sprinkled on sautéed mushrooms that top a grilled steak. Sage flowers are wonderful fried and served as aperitivo with a cold glass of prosecco or white wine.
sage flowers in springflowering rosemarythyme blossoms
The blossoms of herbs carry the perfume and flavor of the herb, but with more subtlety. Sprinkle the flowers on anything you would normally flavor the dish with, just before serving. Be sure to only eat flowers that have not been treated with chemicals though. Buon Appetito!
I think we take fresh peas for granted. With sugar snap and snow pea pods in the produce section of any grocery store all year long, it’s easy to do. Seeing peas all year long removes us from the fact that peas are a spring vegetable. What we should be seeing now, in April and May, are piles of fresh English pea pods. But sadly they’re difficult to find. I asked the produce manager at the local Kroger here and he looked at me with a puzzled expression and pointed out the packaged snow pea pods. They’re nice too, but nothing says “spring” like a big crate of English peas.
Unless it’s the spring onions, sweet and juicy, the fresh garlic, with its soft, new skin and light flavor, or new arugula and lettuces! Spring means breaking away from heavy winter greens and going light and easy and fresh.
In Tuscany, fresh peas, in the form of the classic English pea pods which you have to shell, are available only in the spring and only for a short period of time. The arrival of English peas at the corner vegetable store or produce section means spring is in full swing and summer isn’t far away! Once they’re gone, you have to wait a whole year to eat them again.
In Venice, they make a soupy risotto called risi e bisi, which uses both the fresh peas and the little green pods they come in. There is a tough membrane on the inside of the shell, protecting the peas, which is carefully peeled away to free the tender, sweet outer pea pod. The pieces of pod are sautéed with butter and onion, the rice goes in and is cooked with a light vegetable stock made with the inedible parts of the pods. Nothing is thrown away, everything is appreciated and savored. After all, they’re only here for a month in the spring! Then the fresh peas are tossed in towards the end of cooking. Finished with Parmigiano or grana and butter, it’s a delightful spring dish. We recently made one of my favorite spring pastas in cooking class and I was reminded of how lovely fresh peas and spring onions taste together in a dish. In the US, scallions are available all the time, but in Italy the spring and early summer bring luscious spring onions with a large white bulb and thick green tops. They too are the harbinger of warmer weather. And if I can find some green garlic, I’ll toss slivers of that in with the onions!
I’m looking forward to getting back to Tuscany for our culinary tours in May and June and can’t wait to see what spring vegetables are in the garden! I hope I haven’t missed the peas! Sugo di Piselli, Pancetta & Cipollini (spring peas, pancetta & new onions)
1 cup diced pancetta
2 spring onions, chopped, or 8 scallions
1 ½ cup fresh peas
Extra virgin olive oil
6 fresh sage leaves, torn in two
Sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper
If you can’t get English peas, get sugar snap peas and slice them 1/4 “ thickness on the diagonal.
Gently sauté the pancetta and onion in olive oil until soft, adding freshly ground black pepper if the pancetta has been cured without it (which is usual in the US). Add the sage leaves and fresh peas and sauté a few minutes, adding salt to taste, until the peas are just cooked through. When the pasta is al dente, toss it with the sauce, adding a little of the pasta water and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Top with grated Parmigiano before serving.
After all the cold rain of April we are rewarded with the burgeoning flowers of May. Poppies, roses and peonies cover the Tuscan landscape. Acacia is rampant along highways, turning miles of roads into soft white shoulders. Elder flowers dot dark elder bushes throughout the countryside and I’m preoccupied with how best to get at them while they’re in their prime. Both acacia and elder are edible and I love adding them to a simple fried antipasto along with baby artichokes and the big sage leaves that come out in the spring. It’s a brief, fleeting season and so we have to hurry.
Acacia smells beautiful, reminiscent of orange blossom, with white droplets bunched together like grapes, drooping from the branches. Acacia is everywhere and generally has branches that grow within reach, giving easy access to the flowers.
The elder (sambuco in Italian) has an unusual smell with large pale yellow lace-like flowers against dark green leaves. It is more difficult to pick as the bushes tend to grow on steep slopes on the sides of roads, maddeningly just out of reach.
I first fell in love with fried elder flowers when I was little girl in Italy and my mother learned how to fry them, which is common in the area around Verona. Not understanding the concept of seasons, I would bring flowers home all year long that I hoped were the right blossoms for frying. I was so often disappointed. Elder isn’t eaten or used much in Tuscany but in the northern regions they make tinctures and syrups of both the flowers and the berries.
The batter is the simplest thing in the world and you make just however much you think you’ll need for the flowers and leaves you want to fry. Put flour in a bowl with a little salt. With a whisk start pouring white wine and stirring to incorporate. Use just enough wine that you have a batter the consistency of crepe batter. Heat peanut or grapeseed oil on a high heat, dip your flowers into the batter and put them in the oil. Turn them when they’re golden brown, not too dark, and drain them on paper towels.
In the summer we have zucchini blossoms and sage leaves, but in the spring we celebrate the short season of acacia and elder blossoms. If you can’t find any flowers to fry, try small artichokes, zucchini slices and mushrooms. Buon appetito!
Tiramisu is one of my favorite desserts because its richness is surpassed only by the simplicity with which it is made. Yesterday, January 17th, was the International Day of Italian Cuisine. Each year the GVCI Gruppo Virtuale di Chef Italiani (virtual group of Italian chefs) chose a classic Italian dish for chefs the world over to recreate. This year they chose tiramisu, that classic dessert made with mascarpone, eggs and savoiardi cookies, whose roots are fairly modern but obscure.
The word “tiramisu” literally means “pick me up” and references the caffeine, alcohol and high caloric content from the sugar and eggs. It’s difficult to trace the true origins of this dessert. You won’t find tiramisu in Italian cookbooks featuring authentic cuisine much before the early 1990’s, but most stories place its origins in a restaurant somewhere in Northern Italy. (There have been unfounded rumors that it originated in Tuscany but my experience with the Tuscans as frugal and austere prohibit them from coming up with such a scrumptiously rich dessert.)
I was traveling in northern Italy last summer and I happened upon an excellent restaurant in Treviso, a lovely town of archways and canals. Alle Beccherie is a small, welcoming trattoria down an alley just off the main square. It was a gem of a find; the owner was welcoming, the wait staff made a big deal of dressing my salad and deboning my fish tableside, the clientele were well-heeled locals and, as luck would have it, the menu claimed they were the original creators of tiramisu!
In talking to the owner, he explained how 35 years ago a local woman went to work in Germany and came back to Treviso to work for his father at their restaurant. The first thing she did, he said, was invent a new dessert, and the rest is history. The origins in a small restaurant in Treviso has been corroborated by several friends from Northern Italy, so I left feeling fairly certain that I’d found the place.
een corroborated by several northern Italian chef friends, so I’m going to run with it.
At Alle Beccherie they serve tiramisu in a classic manner: they wheel the dessert cart up to your table and plop a big spoonful of tiramisu onto a plate, right out of the dish it was made in. Rich local mascarpone cream mixed with fresh eggs and layered with savoiardi, espresso and dessert wine come together as more than the sum of their parts. When made well, it is heaven on earth.
The key to making tiramisu is to use the classic ingredients, all of which are readily available. Marsala wine is mixed with the espresso coffee, although when I’m in Tuscany I frequently use vin santo. There is an ongoing argument about whether pavesini cookies or savoiardi should be used, but because savoiardi are more widely used in northern Italy and easier to find in the US, we’re going to stick with them for now. In Tuscany they make it without cream because they tend to shy away from dairy, but as they have so many more cows in Treviso, I’m guessing the addition of cream is authentic.
Following is the authentic recipe for tiramisu. Feel free to leave comments about your experiences with tiramisu?
Enjoy the celebration of Italian Cuisine! and Buon Appetito!
Tiramisu
2 eggs, separated
6-8 tbsp sugar
16 oz marscapone cheese
1 cup cream
24-32 savoiardi cookies, or dry ladyfingers
2 cups espresso coffee, cooled
¼ cup marsala or vin santo
Beat the egg whites until stiff in a clean bowl, beating in 2 tbsp sugar. In a separate bowl, whip the cream until stiff with 2 tbsp sugar. In a third bowl, put the yolks and marscapone and beat together with 2 tbsp sugar. Fold the whipped cream and egg whites into the marscapone. In a small bowl, combine the rest of the sugar with the coffee and liquor.
Place a thin layer of marscapone in the bottom of a deep glass baking or serving dish. Individually dip the cookies quickly into the coffee and layer them in the pan, top with a layer of marscapone and then another layer of cookies. There should be two to three layers of cookies alternated with a 1/2″ layer of marscapone, finished with marscapone on top. Sprinkle the top with cocoa, chopped chocolate or, my favorite, ground espresso beans. Refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving.
Edible flowers are both beautiful and functional. So many flowers are edible, from nasturtiums, pansies, and violets, to perennial herbs like rosemary, sage and chive. The effort you make to plant and cultivate them will reward you both in the garden and on the plate.
