Leek and potato soup with flaked almonds

Souping is one of the foodie trends for 2016. Apparently souping is the new juicing, being made trendy by super healthy Gwyneth Paltrow and clean eating blogellas. Actually the word souping makes me shudder.
And what's so new about it? It's one of the oldest ways of cooking, known for thousands of years. The history of soup is as old as the history of cooking.
The Chinese workers who were excavating the base for a new airport, have dug out a bronze cooking pot which was sealed so tightly that the soup inside it was still liquid. The archeologists confirmed that the pot and its contents were at least 2400 years old. It still contained bones and turned green due to the bronze oxidation. Eat your heart out, Gwynnie.

Soup has never been out of fashion, has it?! Growing up in Russia, soup was served on a daily basis. Nurseries, schools, factory canteens, hospitals etc - soup was considered to be part of a healthy diet. And believe me, the Russians know their soups.
And what about the UK? There are so many British soups to choose from.
So I'm sorry, souping might be a new word (and silly at that too), but the actual soup has never left our tables.

Last week's Superb Souping Box from Abel and Cole had ingredients enough for three different soups.
One them of them was a twist on a classic leek and potato soup. This is one of our favourites which I cook quite often in winter, it's always easy to make and so tasty.

Leek and potato soup with flaked almonds
Ingredients:
3 leeks
1 celery stick
2tbsp sunflower oil
2 big potatoes
1 clove of garlic
1 bay leaf (optional)
1 vegetable stock cube
100ml coconut milk (standard milk would be absolutely fine as well)
flaked almonds

Slice the leeks finely, making sure that you get rid of all the grit in the green part when washing them. Trim the celery and chop it as well. Place the leeks and celery in a deep frying pan with the sunflower (or olive) oil, don't season yet, as you might find the stock cube salty enough. On low fry for about 10 minutes, stirring infrequently. Chop the garlic and add to the leeks, cook for another couple of minutes.
Place the fried vegetables in a medium sized pan, add the peeled and chopped potatoes.
Make the stock with 1 vegetable stock cube and hot water, about 600ml. Pour over the leeks and potatoes, add a bay leaf or any other dried herbs you like, cook simmering for about 25 minutes. In the last 5 minutes add the coconut milk. This is entirely optional, I had a carton of coconut milk so used that, but usually I add just plain semi-skimmed milk.
In a dry frying pan toast a handful of flaked almonds for about 2-3 minutes, tossing them so that they don't get burnt.
Blitz the soup with the hand blender and serve hot with the flaked almonds scattered on top.
The almonds add an extra texture to an otherwise smooth and creamy soup. A nice touch (though I confess I prefer my usual spoonful of soured cream or thick Greek style yogurt for a hint of sourness).

And here it is, a simple yet delicious soup (and I don't even need to flog a fitness DVD or a cook book, lol).

What's your favourite winter soup? And what do you think of the word "souping" - yay, nay or meh?

Spring greens soup

Spring greens soup

I love it when the garden reawakens in spring and starts giving us gifts of fresh greens and pretty flowers. I try to weed the nettles from the garden, as they tend to take over, but there is a big patch behind the greenhouse where I keep my nettles contained, mostly for the butterflies and bees.
Last week's soup box had ingredients and a recipe for a French soup with chervil and mustard. I added to it the freshly picked garlic green leaves, thyme and nettle tips (tops? I can never remember what's the right word, but you know what I mean; you only need the very top few young leaves).

Spring greens soup
Ingredients:
1 medium carrot
2 celery sticks
2tbsp olive oil
green onions (I used one with a big sized bulb)
2 cloves of garlic
a small bag of salad potatoes
1tbsp Dijon mustard
2tbsp chervil, chopped
a handful of fresh nettle tops, chopped
several leaves of fresh garlic greens
1tsp fresh thyme

Peel the carrot and chop finely. Fry in the olive oil with the finely chopped celery and the white part of spring onions. Add the garlic and keep frying until the vegetables have softened. Slice the salad potatoes into discs (just wash them and keep the skin on). Fry for a couple of minutes, stirring, with the added Dijon mustard.
Put all the vegetables in the pan, cover with hot water and bring to boil. Cook for 5 minutes, then lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the nettle tops, fresh chopped garlic leaves and green part of spring onions, thyme and chervil in the last 5 minutes of cooking.
Serve with a nice chunk of bread. It is also lovely with a tablespoon of Greek style yogurt stirred in it.

It's a delightful light spring soup, bursting with flavours. If you haven't eaten nettles, now is a good time to do some foraging, while the nettles are still young and not stringy. They are very healthy, a good source of iron, but also very tasty too.

Bloody Mary soup

The spring has come, but hasn't decided on whether it wants to be warm or cold. One day the sun is shining, and you feel like getting rid of a coat and enjoying the fresh mild wind. The next day it's grey and miserable with the rain in different degrees from a slightly bothering drizzle to a bucketing relentlessly outpour. On a day like that, you crave comfort food. I love soups, and never get bored with them. It must be my Russian upbringing, as the Russians tend to eat soup on a daily basis.

I've been enjoying my souping boxes from Abel and Cole, of which I talked recently. 

The latest box had ingredients for Bloody Mary soup. 

I used all the ingredients suggested by Abel and Cole, but have slightly adapted a recipe. First of all, I added some vodka. How come a Bloody Mary miss such an important ingredient?! I didn't use a big chilli. In fact, the chilli has found a different kitchen altogether. I am not very good at chopping chillies, way too often I end up swearing at myself for touching my eyes or face in the process. So, I prefer to use a good old Tabasco sauce or chilli paste, which saves me time and effort (as well as my eyes).

Bloody Mary soup

Ingredients:

a punnet of tomatoes (about 15 small ones)

1 big red sweet pepper

1 red onion

a dash of olive oil

2 celery sticks

2 cloves of garlic

1tbsp of freshly grated horseradish

parsley, torn

zest of 1 lemon + juice of half a lemon

a dash of Tabasco

50g vodka

celery salt (optional, you can use a standard sea salt)

Roast the sliced pepper, onion and tomatoes in a tray with a dash of olive oil. Season with a bit of celery salt. Roast for about 20 minutes.

Dice the celery and chop the garlic, give them a quick fry with a bit of olive oil. Put all the veggies in a pan, add water to cover all the vegetables. Bring to boil, and simmer for half an hour, with the grated lemon zest and lemon juice, grated horseradish and a bit of Tabasco. Add vodka in the last 10 minutes of cooking. The alcohol will add a deeper flavour to the overall dish, but you can skip it for sure. Once cooked, blitz the soup with a hand blender. Serve the soup hot in mugs with parsley and a nice slice of bread.

This is an excellent zingy soup, very flavourful and tasty. Bloody gorgeous if you ask me.

If you fancy finding out what other delicious soups you can cook with Abel and Cole, check out their Superb Souping Box. 

I have used Diplomat vodka in this recipe, but I guess any good vodka will do, like Stolichnaya (only not the flavoured varieties). Actually I don't drink vodka, never have, but because I was born in Russia, people automatically jump to conclusions that I must be a vodka-drinker. Quite often when we have guests, they bring me a bottle of vodka as a treat, bless them. I don't want to sound rude, so always thank them graciously and then use in cooking. It's excellent for curing salmon for example, or making pickles. This bottle has been unopened for half a year, now that I opened it I'll need to think of good recipes for using it. What would you suggest?

Abel and Cole Superb Souping Box

If you decided to observe Lent and go meatless, soups are certainly an answer to a question What to cook? Lenten recipes don't have to be bland and lacking in flavour. If you are running of ideas though, you might consider getting a Superb Souping Box from Abel and Cole. I have been a customer of A&C for a few years, on and off, skipping some weeks altogether, or ordering for a few weeks in a row.
I love soups, and was very curious to try their recent addition to fruit & veg boxes - Superb Souping boxes. which are different each week. So far I have tried two of them (the third one was delivered just yesterday, and I'm cooking one of the soups today)
Soup boxes come with a selection of vegetables, fruit, herbs and spices as well as recipes for three wholesome soups.
To give you an idea on what to expect, have a look inside the box. The first Souping box I ordered had ingredients for 3 delicious soups, all vegetarian. The recipes suggested cooking a Winter Pho, Spanish carrot soup and Bay beet borscht. I cooked the first two soups and used the vegetables for the 3rd soup in a different dish, but I will use the recipe one day.

Winter Pho was a delightful hearty fusion soup, a mix of English and Vietnamese flavours: leeks, carrot, mushrooms and watercress were cooked with chilli, ginger, garlic, star anise, juice and zest of lime and tamari. The addition of zest and juice of a whole lime made it extra special. It was easy to make and tasted delicious. A real winner.

Winter Pho

Spanish carrot soup was a pureed soup variety, vibrant, colourful and zesty. I love carrot soups, and usually add some orange juice to it. This recipe asked to roast the carrots first. Cook the red pepper, cut into strips, with an onion, garlic and chilli. Add smoked paprika, zest and juice of one lemon and cumin seeds. Smoked paprika adds an extra warmth to the soup. It was great comfort food.

Spanish carrot soup

The second box had ingredients for Moroccan chickpea soup, Mushroom and rosemary soup as well as Parsnip, Banana and lime soup. It's the last soup that totally sold it to me. I haven't tried those flavours together in soup before, and was very curious.
Abel & Cole themselves say in the recipe "Banana in a soup may sound a bit bonkers. Trust us - it works, and adds a creamy, velvety depth". I am so glad I gave it a go.
Parsnip, banana and lime soup might not have been a looker, but oh boy, it was so good. I am definitely keeping the recipe to use in the future. It uses 2 parsnips, onion, red chilli, garlic cloves, turmeric, zest and juice of 1 lime and a banana. You have to try it.

Mushroom & rosemary soup is a classic soup, with a twist, as it included an apple as one of its ingredients. These are the ingredients which went into the soup: a punnet of mushrooms, celery, onion, garlic cloves, carrot, balsamic vinegar and rosemary. I usually add a potato or some rice, when cooking a mushroom soup, and it was the 1st time I tried it with an apple.

The earthy flavours of mushrooms were enhanced by the fruity note from an apple and rich acidity from balsamic vinegar. It was an interesting recipe, but I still prefer to add a potato instead of an apple.

Mushroom & rosemary soup

The last of the three was a Moroccan chickpea soup, another colourful dish with lots of flavours going on.

Moroccan chickpea soup

As I was editing the photos for this post, a new soup was simmering on the cooker from my 3rd Superb Souping box - Watercress, Salsify and Crispy Garlic Soup. Black salsify looks quite ugly, like a dirty rough-skinned carrot. But under that rough skin there's a delicate soul. I have tried it before, in a salad (see my old post Black salsify and wild mushrooms warm salad)

Black salsify

The soup recipe included onions, carrot, black salsify, celery, juice and zest of one lemon and watercress, with garlic thinly sliced, fried and scattered over the soup. Very flavourful and quite unusual. I liked the addition of crispy garlic, though I think the delicate salsify is a bit overwhelmed by the peppery watercress and garlic. Still, top marks to A&C for developing varied recipes every week. I still have to cook two more soups - Bloody Mary and Asian apple beet soup.

Each soup box costs £12.50 plus delivery. It includes all ingredients, from vegetables to fruit, from herbs to spices and sauces.

Have you tried a Superb Souping Box?

Watercress, salsify and crispy garlic soup

Disclaimer: I haven't been asked to write about soup boxes. All products have been purchased by me.

Blood orange and limoncello cake

I haven't done much blogging this week, feeling restless and a bit depressed. My Mum is unwell, and with us being so far apart, there is nothing I can do to help her. I keep cooking and taking photos as usual, but once I sit in front of my laptop, I feel like brain-dead. Call it an apathy or a loss of mojo...
Anyway, these few weeks we have been enjoying the blood oranges. The season of blood oranges is so short, but when they are here, I try to add them to almost anything, sweet or savoury.
Last week I baked a Limoncello cake with blood oranges, and it was a delicious moist cake, which has disappeared pretty fast.

Blood orange & Limoncello cake
Ingredients:
4 medium eggs
200g caster sugar
140ml Limoncello
zest of 2 and juice of 1 blood orange
130g self-raising flour
130g cornflour
1 tsp baking powder
30g ground almonds
190g butter, melted
for the icing:
icing sugar mixed with juice of blood orange (at least 4 heaped tbsp of icing sugar)

In a big bowl beat the eggs with the caster sugar, add limoncello, grated blood orange zest and juice, flour, cornflour, baking powder and ground almonds, mix well. Add the melted butter and mix again. The cake batter is quite runny in consistency.
Butter the cake ring tin or use the cake release spray, pour in the cake mixture. Place the cake tin in the oven preheated to 180C. Bake for about 45-50 minutes. Check if it's ready with a wooden skewer.
In a small bowl mix the icing sugar with the orange juice, until you get the runny consistency. Pour over the cake.

If you don't have blood oranges, swap them for standard oranges or lemons. The only place that I can get blood oranges at the moment is Abel and Cole. Order a kilo at £2.75 or 5kg for £13 plus delivery at £1.25. The quality of their blood oranges is excellent. I just wish there was a place nearby where I can buy them whenever I fancy freshly squeezed blood orange juice. They are just so above the standard oranges in taste and colour.

Haggis sausage rolls with cranberries and sesame seeds

I have ordered my haggis from Abel and Cole for Burns Night in advance. Last year we had a traditional Macsween haggis, which I cooked following the instructions on the packet (see my post Burns Night dinner, minus the pipers). I remember we had quite a bit left over, and I used it as a stuffing for sweet peppers. This year I fancied something different. This year's haggis came from Peelham Farm.
I loved the recipe for Haggis sausage rolls in Delicious magazine online, and have adapted it, with a few changes in ingredients. And it suggested using a ready-made puff pastry. I'm the Queen of Jus-Rol, and don't bother with making my own pastry, it won't be as good anyway.

Haggis sausage rolls with cranberries and sesame seeds
Ingredients:

250g haggis, skinned and crumbled
150g pork sausagemeat (I used 3 pork and caramelised onion sausages)
a handful of freshly chopped thyme and sage
a handful of dried cranberries (I used Ocean Spray Craisins, as they're juicy and sweet)
1 pack of Jus-Rol puff pastry, 320g
1 medium egg, beaten with a dash of milk
sesame seeds

In a deep mixing bowl crumble the skinned haggis. If using sausages, remove the skins and discard them, add the sausagemeat to the haggis. Add the herbs and cranberries, and mix well. You don't have to add any salt, as there is enough salt in haggis and sausages.
Open the pastry, cut in half. Lay the filling in the middle of each half, like a long thin sausage.
Brush one side of the pastry with the egg mix, close the other side over and brush with more egg over. Slice each sausage roll into small 4cm pieces.
Put a generous helping of sesame seeds in a small bowl. Dip each mini-roll in the egg, then in the sesame seeds.
Place all the mini-rolls on the foil inside a tray (I had one full tray and a half), greased with a bit of oil. bake at 180c for 15+ minutes.
Serve hot with the soured cream or mustard.

I love sausage rolls, and let me tell you, these ones totally rock. Some of the best sausage rolls I ever had. Totally scrummy.

Adding my post to Cooking with herbs linky at Lavender and Lovage. This month's theme is Store-cupboard basics, essentials and herbs. Dried cranberries and sesame seeds are my cupboard basics and essentials.

Spiced pumpkin cupcakes for #UnileverHalloween

My little man has been off school today, as he is not feeling well. He spent most of the day in bed, watching the CBeebies and sleeping. To cheer him up, I baked a batch of spiced pumpkin cupcakes, though it is still two weeks until Halloween.
The weather has been ghastly for the last few days, and baking cakes is always a good way of spending day indoors.
I love culinary challenges, and was thrilled to be invited by Unilever Kitchen to join in a Halloween and Bonfire night challenge, testing my cooking skills - spooky style.
They said:
"Now, we much prefer the ‘treat’ to the ‘trick’ here at Unilever kitchen , so we’d like to challenge you to whip up some ‘treat’ snacks and dishes to keep the family warm during the Halloween and Bonfire season. The most inventive dish will then be awarded the top place, with the creator receiving tickets to the London Dungeon Experience for four people.

To help you on your spooky challenge we’ll provide you with a delicious foodie Halloween and autumn themed hamper, full of mouth-watering seasonal treats, Unilever products as well as some Halloween inspired surprises. Whether it’s ghostly cupcakes, banging stews or frighteningly good soups, the choice is yours!"

Since the hamper arrived, my son Eddie kept asking me when I was going to bake the spooky cupcakes.

Earlier today I had a delivery of glorious pumpkins from Abel & Cole, and just had to use some of them in baking.

Spiced pumpkin cupcakes (makes 20+)
Ingredients:
140 g cooked pumpkin
1/3 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2tsp ground ginger
1/3 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
3 medium eggs
200g caster sugar
100ml olive oil
135g yogurt
1tbsp molasses
1tbsp golden syrup
240g plain flour
210g cornflour
80+ ml water
Start by cutting a small sized pumpkin into big chunks and scoop out the seeds. Slightly brush with oil and roast at 180C for half an hour. I used 3 pieces of pumpkin for the cupcakes ( the rest I served for dinner with venison steaks).

Remove the skin from the pumpkin pieces and mash with a fork in a big mixing bowl. Add all the spices, sugar and mix well. Add the olive oil, yogurt, molasses and golden syrup, and mix well again. Finally add the flour and cornflour. At this point the cake mix will be very thick. Add water a little bit at a time, until you have a smoother consistency, which is easier to ladle into the muffin cases.
Place the muffin cases in a big muffin tin and pour the cake mix leaving 1cm at the top.
I also used a silicone cupcake mold, as my son Eddie was very eager to try fancy-shaped cupcakes.
Bake the muffins/cupcakes at 180C until the wooden skewer comes clean (about 20+ minutes).

Let the cupcakes cool completely before decorating with the glace frosting.
For the frosting mix 250g icing sugar with 4tbsp lemon juice and 2tbsp coconut oil. You might want to add a little bit of water, to make it easier to spread over the cupcakes. Also add a bit of food colouring. The actual frosting is much more orange in real life than in the photos, but the light is abysmal today, and I couldn't get it right when I took the photos.
I used Dr Oetker icing writing pens to add a few touches.

We also did some ghostie cupcakes by adding the marshmallows on top of the frosting and painting faces with Dr Oetker icing pens.

Baking with veggies is this month's theme for Tea Time Treats hosted by Lavender and Lovage and The Hedgecombers.

Rabbit stew with chocolate

Rabbits in pots bring to mind the crazy bunny boiler from The Fatal Attraction. So, who or what has forced me to cook a rabbit? I blame it all on handsome chef Dom and his Random Recipes.
For Random Recipes challenge in May you are supposed to dig out a cook book that you haven't opened in ages. Well, I have quite a few of them, Sophie Griegson's Travels a la carte which I bought about 18 years ago and never used, very pretentious Skinny Meals in Heels which I won and Two Fat Ladies Full Throttle published in 1998 to name but a few. I showed these three books to my younger son and asked him to choose. He went for Two Fat Ladies because they were on a motor bike. OK, good choice. Now for the recipe! Please, please, let it be something palatable, if I remember it correctly, it has a famous Penis stew (horse's, I hasten to add, and it sounds revolting).

So, when the Rabbit stew with chocolate appeared under my thumb, I was almost grateful it wasn't worse than that. For this recipe I got a wild rabbit meat from Abel and Cole. The last time I tried the rabbit was about 17 years ago, when my then new husband and I were invited for dinner. The hostess was French, and cooked the rabbit. When she proudly brought it in, I looked at it and shuddered: it looked like a skinned cat. Abel and Cole's wild rabbit arrived already chopped into pieces, but it still looked like a cat, only chopped. There is no way my guys would eat it, there will be a mutiny on the Bounty. I had to disguise it by chopping into even smaller pieces and trying to remove the bones. So, this dish was an experiment, which I probably won't be repeating in a hurry. Or possibly ever.
I have adapted the Two Fat Ladies' recipe and added some ingredients.

Rabbit stew with chocolate
Ingredients:
1 wild rabbit, cut into serving pieces
100g pancetta, cubed
1tbsp plain flour
salt & pepper
about 8 banana shallots
10 dried apricots
250ml red wine
200ml stock (a stock cube dissloved in hot water)
1 bay leaf
a handful of fresh parsley, thyme, rosemary
50g ground almonds
50g pine nuts
1tbsp grated dark chocolate
1 tin of mixed beans

In a heavy frying pan brown the cubed pancetta until crisp. Remove the crispy pieces but leave the melted fat. Mix the flour with salt and pepper and coat the rabbit pieces well. Put them in the frying pan, brown them carefully in the fat. Place the rabbit pieces in a deep Pyrex dish. Fry the sliced shallots and add to the dish. Deglaze the pan with wine and water and pour over the rabbit with onion. Add the herbs, nuts, apricots and grated chocolate. Place the dish covered with a lid in the oven preheated to 180C. Cook for half an hour at 180C, then reduce it to 150C and cook for another half an hour with the mixed beans added.

It tasted very gamey, not bad at all, and all the flavours work well together. My husband thought it was tasty.
As for the spring clean, I couldn't part with Two Fat Ladies (but I did take two loads of paperbacks to the charity shop, and ended up buying two more cook books, just don't tell my husband).

Black salsify and wild mushrooms warm salad

"Oh, a Stick Man!" (Eddie on seeing the black salsify)

Yes, the black salsify does look like a stick, and pretty dirty too. But Abel & Cole were waxing lyrical about it, calling it a hidden winter gem, and I was very curious to try this delicately flavoured root vegetable. It is often known as the oyster vegetable, because its flavour is reminiscent of oysters (whether it is true I don't know, as I haven't tried oysters either).
I was also intrigued to read about the provenance of Abel and Cole's black salsify. It is grown in a Dutch area reclaimed from the Zuidersea in the 1950-60s. The farm it comes from lies two to three metres below the sea level, isn't that amazing?

Having searched for a selection of black salsify recipes online, I decided that Abel and Cole's own recipe for Black salsify and wild mushrooms warm salad sounded the most enticing.

Black salsify

I picked two sticks, washed and scrubbed them, cut off the ends and cut into 3 pieces each. Cooked in salted boiling water for about 15 minutes, then as suggested, plunged them in the cold water, and later peeled the dark skin off. That's how the cooked black salsify looks (unadorned).

Black salsify, cooked and skinned

I also had a nice box of wild mushrooms from Tesco.
The cooked salsify was chopped into smaller pieces. Mushrooms wiped with a wet cloth and chopped roughly. Fry the mushrooms with two finely chopped cloves of garlic in the mix of olive oil and butter, season well. Add the salsify pieces and pine nuts (a handful), drizzle some good balsamic vinegar and a squeeze of lemon juice.

It was a very satisfying warm salad. I liked the delicate flavour of the black salsify. It was great combination of earthy flavours. I didn't have the rocket, but I suppose it would have been a nice addition.
Serve with a nice chunk of sourdough bread to mop up all the juices. Enjoy!

As it is a vegetarian dish and a salad, it would fit nicely with No Croutons Required linky on Lisa's Kitchen blog.

Butternut squash cupcakes

If you receive Abel and Cole's veg boxes, you might be aware of their Recipe of the month competitions, when they challenge the entrants to reproduce one of their recipes and submit the photo. I won one of their competitions earlier this year, and received a lovely prize of the food ingredients for the next challenge. When I saw their recipe for Gourdgeous Little Cakes, I knew my guys would love it.
We love squash, the butternut squash in particular, and I often cook with it.

I have adapted the recipe (for the original recipe please follow the link above) and skipped the vanilla yogurt icing altogether.
As I bought a pack of pre-sliced butternut squash, I couldn't possibly grate it, instead I slightly oiled it with the olive oil and roasted in the oven preheated to 180C until soft, then just mashed it with the fork.
I have also added a generous glug of the Gourmet Mulling syrup from Selsley Foods instead of the ground cinnamon, and sprinkled the top of each cupcake with the Holland & Barrett's breakfast mix (sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and pine nuts), which my guys are happy to eat by a bucket.

It was a very successful batch, the cupcakes were moist, sweet and very moreish. It's not the first time I have used Abel and Cole's recipe, they have a great selection of recipes online, and you don't have to be a customer to have access to their recipes.

As Hallowe'en is approaching fast, and you might not be sure what to do with the pumpkin's flesh, once you carved it, why don't you try to bake these cupcakes with the pumpkins!

Go botanical: mango salad with edible flowers

"Mama, you are not going to eat that?! That's flowers!" Going botanical in cooking is one of the recent trends (or more likely, the one that has gone back in fashion). And while I often use the rose petals in cooking (as well as primroses in spring), I was thrilled to discover that Abel & Cole sell the edible flowers. This recipe for Mango salad with edible flowers is easy to make, very pretty to look at and tastes great.

Mango salad with edible flowers
Ingredients:
1 ripe mango
1 carrot, grated
a handful of red currants
several flowers of calendula, marigold and nasturtium
2 tbsp olive oil
1tbsp honey + more for drizzling over
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Grate the carrot and mix with the calendula petals (3 flowers). Add the olive oil, lemon juice and honey, mix well. Slice the mango and arrange the slices on a plate. Put the carrot mix in the middle, top up with a few mango slices. Scatter the red currants and more flowers. Drizzle good dark honey over the salad.
It was amazingly good. Really, really tasty, I must say I didn't expect that I would like it so much.
Calendula, marigold and nasturtium petals are so vibrant and add a fun healthy note to any salad.
Marigold petals have a rather peppery note, and I can imagine they would work beautifully in savoury salads, with rocket, pears and blue cheese.

I wish I could say the flowers came from my garden, but I didn't plant any calendulas or marigolds this year. This little box of edible flowers is available from Abel & Cole, and don't they look pretty?!

If you can't use them quickly, you can easily dry the marigold and calendula petals and cook with them later. Many years ago, when I hosted a Tudor-themed dress party for my 30th birthday, I baked a cake with the dried calendula petals. This was a recipe from a cook book which contained Elizabethan recipes. I have lost that recipe and cannot remember the name of the book. The cake was lovely. You can also add the dried petals to black tea and make a flavoured tea. I have read you can add them when making tortillas, but I haven't yet tried that, it will be my next project.

Have you ever tried the edible flowers?

I'm also submitting this recipe to Ren Behan's 'Simple & In Season' blog event, you can see the other entries for June.