The Fragrant Pantry: Floral Scented Jams, Jellies and Liqueurs

by Frances Bissell

Overview

An already acclaimed cookbook by James Beard award winning chef Frances Bissell setting out the techniques and recipes for the use of flowers in the kitchen.

While the use of flowers in cookery is becoming ever more popular, they often feature as little more than decoration. In The Fragrant Pantry, the third volume of an already acclaimed trilogy, Frances Bissell shows us how the scent and flavor of flowers can be used like that of an herb or a spice to add magic to a range of dishes.

In these pages you will find recipes for preserves as diverse as myrtle-scented figs, peach and lavender mostarda, rum and jasmine mincemeat, wild garlic flower pesto, mango, jasmine and lime kulfi, elderflower, cucumber and lemon gin and "gorgeous gillyflower grappa." You will also discover how the delicate taste of rose petals can transform raspberry ice cream. And you will learn the way in which fresh edible flowers or floral extracts can be used to create exquisite preserves.

For Frances Bissell cooking with flowers is not a fad or a fashion, but a natural way of cooking which reflects the seasons, and which owes much to English culinary traditions going back over centuries. These easy-to-follow recipes allow both the experienced and novice cook to experiment with floral cooking with real confidence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781944869588
Publisher:	OR Books
Publication date:	01/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

The first woman chef to be elected to the Academy of Culinary Arts in 1997, FRANCES BISSELL has been guest chef in some of the world’s leading hotels and restaurants, including the Café Royal in London, and the George V in Paris. A lecturer, broadcaster, and TV presenter, she is the author of many books and was the Times’ (of London) food writer for thirteen years. She has been the recipient of the Glenfiddich Award for Cookery Writer of the Year in Britain and the James Beard Foundation Award in the United States for her Book of Food.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The smell of sugar and fruit cooking together in a large pan was a delicious part of my childhood, even though I complained about being scratched by brambles when we were sent off to pick wild blackberries in late summer before returning to school. And I can remember being rather dismissive of the glowing coral jelly my mother made from crab apples. Why could we not have shop-bought jam, like my school friends? But when I had a kitchen of my own, I soon experienced the satisfaction of making my own preserves, and the pleasure they give to friends and family. And I particularly enjoyed, and still enjoy, making jams and jellies from food gathered in the wild.

When staying in friends' houses for any length of time, I like to make myself feel at home by cooking, baking and especially making preserves with whatever I find in their local market or forage in their garden. Often I would not have the proper equipment, especially for jelly making, and I can confirm that the up-turned stool with a scalded clean tea towel or pillowcase suspended from the legs makes a perfectly adequate jelly bag and rack.

This book is not about filling shelves and shelves with home-made preserves. Who amongst us has that kind of space in our kitchen? And who wants to spend hours peeling onions or strigging red currants? No, this is about using what you might find in your local farmers' market one Saturday morning, or what a friend might bring you from their house in the country. It's about thinking beyond a salad or a smoothie, and considering how you might preserve those fresh flavours for a while longer. It's about planning ahead to give your friends a small edible treat for a birthday or Christmas, something that is all your own work. It is easy, I promise you. There are no recipes calling for ten kilos of tomatoes, or a bushel of peaches – although if you are lucky enough to have such quantities, the recipes will adapt to accommodate them. With just a little fruit and some fresh edible flowers or floral extracts you can make two or three small jars of exquisite jelly. More unusual savoury preserves can be made with vegetables and certain flowers, and not all in jars. I have recipes for liqueurs and syrups, gin and grappa flavoured with flowers and fruit, and recipes for drying and freezing to preserve delicate flavours.

In the 1980s I was invited to Colombia by the British Council to take part in a British Week, with gastronomy as the main theme. As well as curating a Food&Drink book exhibition, I gave a series of cookery demonstrations in Bogota, one of which was on Cooking with Flowers, Colombia being the home of an important flower-growing industry. I still have the photocopied recipe sheets I prepared, including an English lavender pudding, rose soufflé, rose junket, lavender sorbet and lime flower and honey ice cream. But to give some historical context to my predilection for cooking with flowers I opened my demo with an extract from the 1791 Warner edition of Antiquitates Culinariae, the earliest known collection of English recipes, with its origins in the Middle Ages. "To preserve red rose leaves" is as simple, straightforward and accurate now as when it was first written; "Of the leaves of the fairest buds, take halfe a pound; sift them cleane from seeds; then take a quart of faire water, and put it in an earthen pipkin, and set it over the fire until it be scalding hot; and then take a good many of other red rose leaves, and put them into the scalding-water, until they begin to look white, and then strain them; and thus doe untill the water look verie red. Then take a pound of refined sugar and beat it fine, and put it into the liquor, with half a pound of rose leaves, and let them seethe together till they bee enough; the which to know is by taking some of them up in a spoon, as you doe your cherries; and soe when they be thorow cold, put them up, and keepe them verie close" .

Preserving foodstuffs in times of plenty, to provide nourishment during lean times, has always been a part of the human experience. Making strawberry jam after a summer visit to a fruit farm is an atavistic memory of those times when our ancestors would preserve the seasonal gluts of fruit and vegetables for use in the winter. Of course we can buy strawberries from every part of the globe in winter, but who would buy expensive, and often tasteless, out-of-season strawberries to use in jam? No, the pleasure of making preserves is that we make them in season, when produce is at its peak and prices are at their lowest.

But the definition of 'seasonal', 'home-grown' and 'local' becomes wider and wider, with the strawberry and tomato season in England, for example, stretching from March to November, and 'new season' English asparagus on the shelves in September. A walk through north London streets in early November revealed thriving outdoor-grown olive trees with enough olives to make a harvest; a grape vine growing over the fence had ripe bunches of small black grapes; squashed fruit on the pavement had fallen from a laden fig tree a couple of weeks earlier; a jasmine bush was coming into flower for the second time; scented roses were in full bloom; lavender was still in flower and I saw nasturtium flowers tumbling over a rockery. I had picked my blackberries in July, fruit that always used to be associated with autumn. Wild garlic flower jelly was already made and put away in March. Tradition has it that sloes should be picked after the first frost. Had I waited that long, the birds would have eaten them long ago, as they were ripe for foraging in August. So these extended seasons with unusual growing patterns leads to some unexpected combinations; blueberry, pear and lavender jam and quince and rose petal jelly, for example. I give the recipes, however, (pp 000 and 000) because somewhere, in one hemisphere or the other, at some time, someone might be able to make similarly unusual combinations. And if not, at least let them be inspirations for you to create your own flower and fruit preserves as you seize the day and make the most of an unexpected opportunity to produce a truly original creation.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 – Getting started
Chapter 2 – Jam today
Chapter 3 – Spread a little sunshine
Chapter 4 – Good things in bottles
Chapter 5 – In a pickle
Chapter 6 – Fire and ice
Acknowledgments
Index

Interviews

Marketing:

Extensive internet promotion including video, multiple website serialization and extensive social media

Likely endorsement from Alice Waters
Publicity:

Likely author interview on Vogue.com

Author has considerable broadcast experience – book will be pitched heavily to NPR

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Fragrant Pantry:

"Dreamily elegant" —Carolyn Hart, The Independent

"Full of well researched history, excellent common sense and utterly beguiling recipes." —Catherine Phipps, Fire and Knives

"A bouquet of fragrant delights ... there is much here to discover and delight." —New Zealand House and Garden

"A range of unexpected delights" —Sunday Express

"Excellent" —Daily Telegraph

Praise for The Scented Kitchen:

"Enchanting" —Raymond Blanc

"Floral cooking gets an outing from time to time, but rarely so thoroughly or creatively as here." —Tom Jaine, The Guardian

Praise for The Floral Baker:

'All the pleasures of the kitchen and garden in one delightfully fragrant book. Frances Bissell's recipes are outstanding, brilliant in their simplicity and originality. A must for every baker s bookshelf.' —Fiona Cairns

From the Publisher