Eat Your Flowers: A Cookbook

by Loria Stern

Cook with botanical ingredients for stunning visuals and delicious flavors — and let your creativity blossom! For most of us, “eat your flowers” might mean enjoying an edible blossom decorating a restaurant dessert on a night out. For Loria Stern, it’s a way to bring nature into the kitchen, to play with colors and flavors, and to make every dish beautiful. She incorporates natural plant dusts, pressed and fresh blooms, and vibrant herbs and veggies into her cooking for whimsical, gorgeous, and nourishing meals. In this endlessly creative book, she invites you to take advantage of this edible bounty to create your own, providing both her own recipes (and her favorite variations) and the foundational knowledge on how to incorporate botanicals into any dish. Loria shares how to get brilliantly colorful results from all-natural ingredients, such as a gorgeous amethyst spread made from wilted purple cabbage and blended with nuts, which turns bright pink with the squeeze of a lemon. But Loria’s use of botanicals brings value far beyond just the visual—she is skilled at incorporating them in ways that make the most of their true flavors, enhancing each dish in taste as well as aesthetics. Blending freeze-dried raspberries into flour makes her cookie dough a sultry red and gives it a perfect tartness. Breakfasts; appetizers; soups and salads; breads; vegetables; pasta and grains; meat, poultry, and seafood; desserts; and beverages all get floral enhancements, with recipes Eat Your Flowers  shows you how to transform botanical ingredients—root to stem—into recipes that are a pleasure to make, eat, and share.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 2023

Reviews

[Carrie-Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This year, I'm attempting to read a few cookbooks cover-to-cover. Eat Your Flowers is the first one I've finished! It is truly a gorgeous piece of art. Loria's skill and passion shine through her work--I love how she has put so much time and effort into crafting her recipes. You get the sense that it brings her so much joy. A couple of helpful things--In the front, she has a chart on edible flowers/herbs, what they taste like, and what color they'll be in the finished product. She also talks about colorant dust you can use in place of food dyes. This is a generous & invaluable resource from someone who has done the groundwork in figuring out what works & what doesn't.

Everything about this book is beautiful--the writing, the photography, the colors! Full disclosure, I have not tried the recipes yet, but I hope to once I explore good sources for local flowers. A couple I'm especially interested in making are the Herbal Glass Potato Chips and the Flower Pressed Shortbread Cookies.

I have raved about this book to so many people. I hope to add it to my personal cookbook collection soon. It's just that cool.

(Loria Stern has an Instagram account and I highly recommend checking it out to see her creations!)

[Christy Wilhelmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful photography, adventurous recipes. If you have the energy, the finished product will be a huge hit at any gathering. Full disclosure, I received a review copy from the publisher and had the author on my podcast.

[Rama Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feasting on Flowers

The book has numerous color pictures which make the recipes look delicious, but be careful when you use flowers in a recipe because it is a non-traditional ingredient that must be suitably processed so that the bitter tastes of the flower do not dominate. Chamomile is one of the well-known flower products that is widely used for making tea. Not all botanicals are edible, but the author gives a list of edible flowers on pages 18-23 with their flavors, food uses, and comments such as the aftereffects of baking. Many flowers have an unpleasant taste, and they must be blended with appropriate ingredients in suitable proportions. Useful hints include pressing your own flowers, and drying flowers. Some of my favorite recipes from this book are Scarborough herb-pressed biscuits, golden curry lentil soup with apple, flower-pressed chapatis, and green papaya salad.

There are numerous books available on Amazon.com that describe the use of flowers in cooking, and this book is good for illustrations, but I have seen much more enticing recipes from other sources.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are two sections to this book: Information about the plants / flowers, themselves, and then the recipes. I have to be honest, I was much more interested in the first part than the recipes.

Starting with "A Plant Primer," and continuing with the information (including pictures) of Edible Botanicals was very interesting. For each plant, the author gives the name, flavor, uses, and note.

I've always used botanicals in salads, but never gone further in the cooking process. The author uses plants in all types of cooking and baking.

This is worth a look.

[Yunie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very unique and interesting read! I love how thorough and detailed the book is. Not only are there recipes included (which look scrumptious btw) but also guides on which flowers to use, how to use them, the expected flavor and much more! There's also a small section on how to press and dry flowers as well as how to n.v use botanicals as natural food dyes.

Definitely worth a read!

[Melissa Rutledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous, creative, and informative cookbook!

[LUTING CHEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspirational! Beautiful ideas

[DestinyVasquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew aesthetics can heal you.