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Thursday 15 July 2010

Lavender's Blue Dilly Dilly....

We are busy harvesting the last of the summer lavender - what a joy this is. Here you can see one of last year's lavender bottles that we made, and soon we'll be settling down round the table to make new ones and, as usual, we will fall to talking about our favourite recipes. When we were small, my mother had a 'hasty' pudding recipe for when our city fruit bowl had run out. She would make sweet shortcrust pastry and roll out two discs, set one on an enamel plate, scatter it over with currants and finely chopped fresh mint from the kitchen door, sprinkle on a little water from her fingertips and then lay the other pastry disc on top. If we were at home we would be left to pinch it and prick it in our own decorative style, then it would be finished off with a glaze of brushed milk and a little sugar before being put in the oven. To talk about it now, is to taste it. I still make this at home, but we have a new variation which substitutes lavender for the mint. Like mint, lavender is an aromatic, and adds something wonderful when used in cooking. Try a little scattering in apple pie. It works wonderfully with blueberries and raspberries in jam and is lovely with honey and crisp brown bread crumbs in ice cream, or in a syrup over baked figs - I could go on and on. For lunch today we had duck pate on melba toasts on a bed of mixed salad and just to add a little something to the oil and vinegar dressing, I used up the last teaspoonful of blueberry and lavender jam. I wish you could have been here to join us.

10 comments:

  1. Oh, that sounds so wonderful! I can taste it from Seattle! We have a lavender festival each year in August and I look forward to the many food products available... I make a lavender shortbread that we all enjoy. I'm one of those odd folks who doesn't like the scent of lavender, yet, put it in food and I love it! There's no accounting for tastes...

    Julie

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  2. Mmmm Lavender Shortbread that sounds YUM!

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  3. Please show me how to make the exquisite lavender bottle. Shall I come there, or should we do it over cyberspace?
    JoanB

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  4. I'm with JoanB. I want to know how to make these. I have a bumper crop of lavender this year and lots of happy bees.

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  5. My Grandmother's favorite scent was lavender. When I see lavender, I think of her.

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  6. I love lavender! The smell and the taste. I make a lavender/lemon soft cookie. I'll certainly try making your lavender shortbread.

    I also am very interested in the exquisite lavender bottle. Have never seen anything like it. Are the lavender flowers wrapped inside the ribbon? How do you keep them from falling off while weaving the ribbon?

    Thank you again for all the wonderful things you share with us. Port Ewen, NY

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  7. I so love the scent of lavender and right now am lucky to have some "english" lavender drying in the apartment, and to also have an exquisite sachet of French lavender that was sent to from the lady to grew that lavender.

    This recipe of yours really inspires me to ... perhaps ... switch my oven on, and do some summer baking.

    I will have to wait for a cool spell!

    Your site is such fun to visit. Thank you.

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  8. Jane M. - I'd love to trade recipes with you - the lavender/lemon cookies sound wonderful - two of my very favorite tastes combined!

    Actually my recipe is up for all to see on my blog: http://anoteoffriendship.blogspot.com/2009/11/belated-happy-thanksgiving.html

    Julie

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  9. Yes, lavender and lemon is a wonderful combination - lavender frosting on little lemon cup cakes also good to try.

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  10. Thank you very much - I like this idea very much and today I got some lavender to try it myself... :) really a very nice idea :)

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