From guest blogger, Cllr Toby Stride
Elderflowers are one of the culinary delights of the year. For a number of years I made elderflower champagne but there are lots of recipes for it. And it involves preparations months before the elderflowers come into season, making sure you have a supply of lemonade bottles.
I came up with the following recipes as the flavour of elderflower is very distinctive but quite mild and the flowers have a short season- so they come and go and you only get a small window of opportunity to try things out. I have one sweet and one savoury recipe below.
Elderflower Rice Pudding
1 Doz elderflower heads
1 pint/ 500 ml milk
1 Dessertspoon of sugar
4 Oz/ 100g Ground Rice or Pudding Rice.
Pick yourself a bunch of fresh elderflower heads – they should be in flower but not going over i.e., they shouldn’t have brown bits. The heads can be very different sizes but about a dozen is usually enough to fill a mid-sized saucepan. Give the flowers a quick wash but don’t do too much to them before you put them in the pan and add a pint/500ml of milk. Then add a dessert spoon of sugar. Heat them all together very slowly, with the lid on, stirring it around so the sugar dissolves and all the heads get into the milk. After about 15-20 mins the flavour will be in the milk, the elderflower heads will look brown and miserable and it is time to take it off the heat. Pour out the milk through a sieve and through a muslin or jam bag if you have one. Elderflowers tend to leave lots of bits (and sometimes have visitors on them).
Put the rice in a saucepan and then add the elderflower milk and a bit more sugar, to taste. Heat it gently. Ground Rice cooks quicker and tastes better but is too 1950s for most shops to stock it. Pudding rice takes longer and you might need to top up the milk. Either way, you should soon have a rice pudding that tastes of summer, which is great hot or cold and excellent with a range of fresh fruit.
Elderflower milk
You can follow the first part of the recipe and get elderflower flavoured milk which you can use in a number of ways, including making it into custard or adding to a cake recipe. Or you can use it to turn it into a white sauce.
Or, even better, leave out the sugar in the first bit and you get plain elderflower milk to use to make white sauce suitable for a range of savoury dishes; elderflower lasagne anyone?
Elderflower Gravy
1 Doz Elderflower Heads
1 Pint Chicken or Veg Stock
2 Oz/ 50g Butter or Cooking Block Fat (Stork is cheap and vegan friendly)
1 Heaped Tablespoon of Flour
Pick your elderflower heads and shake to remove any livestock making a home in them. Give them a brief wash then put them in a mid sized saucepan and add the stock. Heat gently, covered, for 15-20 mins, stirring them every now and then to get all the flowers to give up their flavour. When the flowers have wilted and look gross, separate them from the stock by using a sieve. If you have one, use a muslin or jam bag to get more of the bits out.
In your pan, put in the butter/fat and heat it gently until it has melted. Turn the heat to low and add the flour and stir it around until it has combined with the melted fat to form a lumpy mess. You need to be quick here to stop it burning but as soon as you can, start adding your elderflower flavoured stock a dribble at a time and stir it around to thin the sauce. Keep adding a bit at a time until you have made it very watery. Keep the heat low but keep stirring and gradually turn up the heat a bit until it gets close to boiling, at which point it will get thicker. If it ends up too thick, add some more hot water – there should be enough elderflower flavour to cope with a bit of dilution. Your gravy is now ready to use.
It goes very well with roast chicken and any supporting veg. It goes very well with rice. It doesn’t go so well with very spicy stuff, as you tend to lose the flavour amongst all the stronger ones.
Once you have the flavoured stock, you can use it for a range of alternatives. Chicken Supreme is fantastic made with Elderflower stock in the sauce. And it can add an unusual flavour to lentil dishes.
Note
Elderflower is generally considered low risk but there is some evidence that it lowers blood sugar levels. Diabetics might need to monitor the impact of using it. Guidance is not clear on what constitutes a high volume of elderflower.
Much thanks to Toby Stride for inspiring us to do something different with elderflowers.
Toby is a Town Councillor for Dursley and leads on the Green Spaces initiative for our town. You can learn a little about him and this project here.
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