Lavender syrup

A few weeks ago, I bought a large pot of dried lavender for cooking. It was an impulse: I'd never seen culinary lavender flowers on sale before, and I'd read a rash of recipes for lavender cupcakes and lavender shortbread. I don't know what I was thinking, because we don't do that sort of cooking or eating. So it sat gathering dust, unopened - until today.

The deadline for this month's Heart of the Matter is looming (it's Friday), and I haven't yet made anything. The theme is herbs, so I decided to make something with the lavender. This syrup was inspired by a lavender jam recipe I read at Once Upon a Tart. It's too runny and thin to qualify as jam, and it's not a jelly because it's full of flowerheads. Syrup it is.

The scent of lavender was overpowering when I finally opened the pot; now the syrup is heavy with floral perfume. Sunshine in a jar.

This will be good with yoghurt, on toast, with roast lamb. And once we've all become addicted, the lavender in the garden will be ready to pick, and I should think it will be even better with fresh flowers than with dried.


















Lavender syrup

10g dried lavender
50g caster sugar
2 tablespoons of honey
150ml Marsala
100ml crème de cassis
120ml water

Put all the ingredients into a heavy saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes, until you have a syrup. Pour into a sterilised jar.


Heart of the Matter is hosted this month by Michele at The Accidental Scientist. The theme is herbs, and the deadline is Friday.



















Links to other herb recipes

Butternut squash with parsley and mint
Three herb stuffing for roast chicken
Steak with lemon and thyme
Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing
Mushroom and tarragon sauce for pasta

Lavender on other blogs
(NB, these are not free from saturated fats)

Lavender ice cream from La Tartine Gourmande
Nigella's lavender cupcakes from Albion Cooks (& lavender sugar)
Lavender-crusted duck magret from Chocolate and Zucchini
Lavender and mint tea from Andrea's Recipes
Lavender cocktails from A Wee Bit of Cooking

Planting roses for our pergola

After a huge Easter lunch we planted the roses which will climb over Lucius's wonderful pergola. Lucius and I went to buy them on Friday - we took two rose reference books, plus Stephen Lacey's Scented Garden, and went out to a pub. Over lunch we each drew up a list of scented climbing roses we liked, and found that there was plenty of overlap between the two. Then we went to Henry Street roses, where we made a third list of what they had (virtually everything on lists one and two). Over coffee, we turned these three scraps of paper into a shopping list, and this is what we bought:

Three David Austen roses, not very tall, but good do-ers: Tess of the D'Urbervilles (crimson), James Galway (pale pink), The Pilgrim (pale yellow) (2). One climbing Iceberg, the only unscented rose, bought because it will flower until Christmas, and because it is one of my father's favourites (and he planted it). Gloire de Dijon (buff, we've got one already here, it's lovely); Mme Isaac Pereire (deep pink); Zepherine Drouhin (cerise); Danse du feu (a bright orange-red semi-double); The New Dawn (pale pink), Mme Alfred Carriere pinkish white; and Guinee, the black rose, with deep velvety petals, which I can see from my desk.

Later, I'm going back to Henry Street to buy standard roses to go beneath the arches. And next week I'm going to take cuttings from my Munstead lavender to underplant - probably not the best time, but, in my experience, plants want to grow, so it's worth a try, and if they don't take, I'll go out and buy some plants - but my stock is very strongly scented, and that's important to me.

I'm also going to buy Albertine, a major casualty of our list-making, mainly because I was afraid she'd take over, and Schoolgirl, a coppery-apricot rose Lucius was particularly keen to have, but which I'm going to plant where he will be able to see it from his desk.

It's snowing now, so I'll take photographs of the pergola tomorrow .... SO exciting, knowing that these lovely roses are in the ground, stretching their roots and settling in.