L is for lavender

My first foray into lavender was a recipe from Raw Food for Everyone called Pickled Mushroom with Lavender. As per the recipe, I whisked together some brine, added some spices and lavender and left it to sit in the fridge for a while.

The flavour? Beautiful. The look? Not so much. I used normal white mushrooms (the recipe says pick a few different types, and clearly I should have listened) which after sitting in the spicy brine became slightly grey and shrivelled like a boxer dog's cheeks. Not a feast for the eyes!

What was needed here was a more robust vegetable. I had a fridge full of carrots that had seen better days, and decided to given them a second, lavendery lease of life.

But would uncooked carrots pickle well? I wasn't sure, and decided to mix up the pickled mushroom recipe with About.com's Spicy Mexican Pickled Carrots recipe, which I tried recently and it turned out a treat.

It's garlic and carrots sauteed briefly, then with fennel seeds, lavender, vinegar and pink peppercorns added and simmered. Next, water and agave and a bit more simmering, and you're there. 

The lavender flavour was subtle and a cracking complement o the rest of spices. This one gets the Flicking the Vs seal of approval!

Now onto lavender in a sweet recipe. Biscuits (or cookies, if you're on the other side of the Atlantic), using a recipe from The Hop Shop, a lavender farm in Kent. 

Here's how my attempt turned out:

Not too shabby, huh? The only tip I'd give you on this one is a) use a less daft cookie cutter. The ears kept falling off the bunnies, which was too traumatic. b) Grind the lavender up til it's powdery, otherwise every so often you'll chomp into one of those biscuits and get a dry lavender flower breaking between your teeth and it'll be all medicinal and weird. Also, if you do it right, you'll get a little purple tinge to the sugar, which is too cool.

Lastly, I put some into scones along with some lemon zest. Here's what they looked like:

I used the recipe of my mum's that never fails, and yet they still didn't turn out like I remembered - these bad boys were a bit less well risen, a bit crispier, a bit drier.

I'm going to revisit these another time, so when I eventually do crack the recipe, I'll post it over here.