Saying it with edible flowers

Edible flowers are one of summer’s biggest food trends, writes Joe McNamee.

When my daughter was younger, she had a particular stunt that was always good for a giggle, never bettered than the morning she pulled it on her Montessori teacher, fetching up at the school door, cute, curly, and doe-eyed, clutching a bunch of flowers in tiny fist, a stray waif from a mawkishly sentimental Hallmark card. ‘Oh!’ teacher gushed, ‘are those flowers for us?’ Silently locking eyes with said teacher, daughter then proceeds to take a monstrous chomp, filling mouth with flower heads and settling into some pretty remorseless masticating as teacher shrieked in horror, subsequently refusing to try one even when it was explained that these were three cornered leek flowers, an edible allium.