As vegetables and fruits, we are using many flowers in our cooking. In this thread let us see some of them. As usual I need your support and please share your comments and recipes in this thread. Name of some flowers which we use for cooking. Any body knows some more name, share here. Rose Patels Drum stick flowers Neem flowers ‘Agatthi’ flower Plantain flower Cauliflower
Rose Gulgandu Ingredients: Fresh rose petals 100 gms Sugar 150 gms Method: Make sugar syrup and add rose petals. Allow it to cook. Stir occasionally, when become like a ‘mass’ remove. Store it and use. Note: Very good when you use this with ‘thambulam’ that is use it when you put betel leaves. It will taste very nice. Caution: This will lead to constipation when you use this frequently. So pregnant ladies use this very limitedly.
Rose Gulgandu 2 Ingredients: Dry Rose petals 100 gms Palm kalkandu 100 gms Cardamom 5 Honey as per your taste Method: Dry rose petals. Crush kalkandu and cardamom. Mix crushed rose petals, kalkandu and cardamom. Add required quantity of honey. Very good for health.
Rose cubes Freeze them in ice cubes and float them in punches also. Petals used in syrups, jellies, perfumed butters and sweet spreads.
Herbal Flower Tea Ingredients: Aavaram poo, Louts and rose. You can get these in Tamil Nadu Marandu Kadai. Get them and take equal quantity. Crush them and put tea. Very good for health. You can use any one of these flowers to make tea. Note:Lotus tea is good for heart patients.
Neem Flower Pachadi (veepam poo) Ingredients: 2 tsp Neem flower (fresh ones) 1 tsp Raw mango, finely chopped 4 tsp Grated jaggery 1/4 tsp Mustard seeds 1 tsp ghee 2 green chilly Salt to taste Method: In a pan pour ghee and put mustard seeds. Then fry fresh Neem flowers. Then add green chilies and fry well. Now add chopped mango pieces. Add 1 to 1 1/2 cup water and allow the mango to cook. Add turmeric powder if you want. After mango pieces cook, add jaggery and mix well. Let it become thick. Remove from the fire and serve. We usually do this for Tamil New year. Note: In my house we love this pachadi. So I usually do bulk when we get mangos cheap. At that time I use to keep the mango pieces in cooker and cook. Then like above recipe make the pachadi. But if you make it thick, it will look like Jam. So you can keep it in the fridge and use as 'sweet and sour' jam for bread or chappati.
Tips to Collect and store Neem Flowers. This is the season we get Fresh Neem Flowers. So try to collect them and clean them. Just keep them in a big plate and dry them. No need to keep them in the sun. If you want to make 'vathal out of the fresh flowers' here are some tips. 1. You can put some neem flowers, in the balance 'maavadu charu' for one day. Then remove from that and dry the flowers in sun. you can use as itis for curd rice or you can fry them and use. 2. When you make 'Javarasi Kuzhuz' Dip the fresh neem flower with the stem, and dry as it is. Dry in sun light. Fry as it is and use. This is very good for sugar patients. 3. If you have dried neem flower, you can fry them in ghee and add some salt with that. Serve with hot cooked rice and ghee. This is very good for digestion and this will control and stop loose motion. Even you can use this from children to elders.
Nice info KA... We don't get drumstick flowers or leaves here.. I love to have poriyal made out of them...
Yes Dear, I am reciving first feed back from you (for this thread) Thanks for that.Bow That is the problem of living in other countries.Rant I am going to post those recipes in near future, say by next week. Enjoy by reading them. When ever you get the ingredients, try to cook them. They are very good for health.