Garden to table - Eating flowers

When I need fresh greens for a salad or a sandwich, my first garden stop is the patch of kale and arugula I have grown for the pollinators. Many bees and other pollinating insects love the nectar and/or pollen of the Brassicas — kale, kohlrabi, radish, broccoli, arugula and so on — so I deliberately let some of these plants go to flower. My kitchen benefits because the flowering shoots and the immature florets are delicious and nutritious. I select fresh, clean, healthy, bug-free morsels and they go straight into a salad or a sandwich without any other prep. Picking these shoots actually causes the plant to produce new side branches and more flowers, so regularly snipping immature blossoms creates a bushier plant and extends the harvest.

Arugula is also known as rocket. I once ordered a rocket salad in an Edinburgh restaurant and it was very fancy and very tasty and it cost about a million pounds. I realized there was no reason I couldn’t be making my own rocket salads. And now I do.

Arugula leaves and flowers have a slightly spicy flavour which I really enjoy. You can tone down the arugula by adding mild lettuces or other tender greens for a more subtle flavour combination. Your choice. It’s fun to experiment with different combinations of leaves and flowers.

Cheers, Burl

Fresh greens (and whites). Baby lettuce, kale florets (bottom), arugula leaves (left) and arugula flowers (top). Notice the four petals which are a characteristic of flowers in Family Brassicaceae (also known as Family Cruciferae ). The white specs are clusters of rocket pollen.

Fresh greens and cheeses on slightly toasted homemade bread makes for a VERY tasty sandwich.