I love edible flowers, they add colour and texture to many different dishes and create a ‘wow’ factor on even the most plain, simple dishes. So when Janice at Greens of Devon emailed me to say they were launching edible tulips this spring I was so excited it was silly. I’ve worked with Greens’ edible flowers over the years and totally love their product and was thrilled when Janice asked me if I’d like to do some recipes using the tulips…..even more thrilled when the box arrived on my doorstep.
So thinking cap on and a good excuse for a bit of recipe development over a rainy, cold Easter weekend and these gorgeous petals were put to good use.
The recipes are easily adaptable for cooking everything from scratch or cheating. Just serve the finished canapé on an edible tulip petal
Guacamole – make it from scratch using my guacamole recipe which will take around 5 mins, or buy a tub of guacamole and slice a lime to finish.
Chicken Tikka Salad – again make the whole thing from scratch; buy ready cooked chicken tikka and add your salad bits or go the real cheat and buy a pack of chicken tikka salad.
Watermelon and Feta Cheese – so simple it’s silly, cube watermelon and feta, place on petal, drizzle with lime and scatter with a little mint, hey presto canapé. This looks particularly gorgeous on the yellow and red tulip leaf.
Roast Vegetables with Cous Cous and Harissa – similar to the chicken tikka, you make it from scratch, make most of it from scratch and buy ready roast veg, or buy the whole thing ready made and totally cheat. If you make it from scratch it’s a family meal or posh superfood salad served with some baby spinach, rocket and watercress.
That was the healthy stuff, now for the sweet canapés, my favourite. I started to think about the flavours and puddings I liked and how they could be miniaturised to fit onto a tulip petal and this is what I came up with.
Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake – the only cheat here is that you could buy a chocolate cheesecake, dice it up and serve with a raspberry on top, homemade is dead easy and delicious. Plus if you make it from scratch you can control the fat content and swap around full fat cream cheese for low fat cream cheese or replace it with non fat quark (yes it all works, just don’t eat the base). In the recipe there other serving tips including a deconstructed version served on an edible tulip too.
Pesches alla Piedmontese are one of my favourite recipes, use peaches, plums or nectarines too. I have adapted this to make them sit on an edible tulip petal.
For a simpler version of these just use the fruit and a teaspoonful of the sweet ricotta, much quicker and no cooking. You could crumble some biscuits on there instead if you want some crunch, oat crunchies would work well.
Finally, Upside Down Rhubarb Crumble, yes a miniature version of rhubarb crumble, these look stunning on the petals, you can change this to apple, pear, gooseberries, just cook the fruit separately and follow the recipe.
I was seriously impressed at the tulips, they lasted 4-5 days, tasted from slightly peppery to no real flavour but just looked stunning and everyone who saw the canapés was bowled over by them, mainly due to the tulip petals. Get them quickly while they’re in season. Thanks to Janice at Greens of Devon for letting me in this fab new range.