Flowers on your plate. Lavender.

Lavender water, made from five grams of flowers that are allowed to infuse in a liter of boiling water for five minutes, is refreshing and soothing. That already told us the Saint Hildegard of Bingen, who knew how to tell us that lions also love lavender. So one should be warned.

By the way, the use of lavender water does not originate from the time of Hildegardis. The Romans already used lavender decoctions in their bathwater. In fact, the name lavender is a distraction from the Latin lavare or wash. But using a washing or cosmetic fragrance in the kitchen, isn't that a step too far? That perfumed taste seems to me to be the threshold when using lavender in the kitchen. The trick is not to let that perfume taste dominate, for example by picking the petals, letting them draw in the right way and combining them with other flavors such as mint. And of course we also have to get used to a new taste. But when the time comes, lavender ice cream, lavender tea and lavender jelly will become a real delicacy.

Lavender sugar

100 grams of fresh lavender flowers, 1000 grams of sugar

Pick the flowers from the lavender when they are open, preferably on a dry sunny day. Mix the flowers in a mixer or mortar with the sugar, but make sure that a perfectly homogeneous mass is formed. Fill tightly closed jars with this sugar and use the lavender sugar to aromatize fruit salads, cool drinks or flower tea. After about a year the lavender sugar has lost a good part of its aroma, but then again there are flowers to make new sugar.

Lavender-mint jelly

2 kilograms of golden-rints, 2 cups finely chopped leaves of spice mint or apple mint, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup lavender flowers.