Flowers on your platter: Enjoy the pumpkin flower pakora

Rahul Verma

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There is an anecdotal story — a joke, really — about a British school inspector trying to bully a Jat teacher in a small town in India. “Mr Singh, what is the name of this flower?” the school inspector asked the teacher, pointing to a bed of bobbing chrysanthemums. “It’s a chrysanthemum, sir,” the teacher said. “Spell the word,” the Englishman barked at him. “Oh, sorry, sir. It’s a rose. R-o-s-e, rose,” Mr Singh promptly replied.

Mr Singh had his own reason for thinking of a rose, but it’s a flower that interests me too — more, however, as a culinary aid. Rose petals, as we know, add colour and fragrance to a dish. The petals are somewhat sweet, and mildly bitter. Chefs since time immemorial have added rose petals, or the essence of rose, to rice-based and other dishes. Even the 5th century ‘Apicius de re coquinaria’, a collection of Roman recipes, mentions a dish prepared with brain and rose petals. “Take roses fresh from the flower bed, strip off the leaves, remove the white from the petals and put them in the mortar; pour over some broth and rub fine,” the recipe begins.

Not just roses, a wide variety of flowers is used to spruce up dishes. I had savoured relishes made out of rose petals but I first ate a full-blown flower at a friend’s house several years back. It was an appetiser that the friend — trained in French cooking — had carefully prepared for us. It comprised a cold prawn served with a salad, remoulade (a mayo and mustard-based sauce), bread and shrimp butter. A bright orange nasturtium was placed at the centre of the salad. I chewed the petals, and was pleasantly surprised. It had a mildly peppery flavour, which went well with the prawn.

Flowers, of course, have been a part of Indian traditional diet. The banana flower, for instance, is much loved in parts of the East and the South. Stir-fried mocha, as it is called in the East, is delicious, as is the mocha chop — chopped and boiled banana flower florets, mixed with boiled potatoes and shredded coconut, and then crumbed and fried. In Tamil Nadu, boiled florets are cooked with cumin seeds, turmeric, chilli and salt, and then garnished with grated coconut.

Another much-loved flower that occasionally finds itself in the kitchen is the harsingar. In Assam, it’s eaten as pakoras. The flower’s bright orange stem is often added to kheer to add colour and to even flavour sweets like kalakand. The startling blue of the aparajita flower (butterfly pea) is used as a food and drink colouring, and is believed to have all kinds of health benefits.

I have picked up some interesting flower recipes from ‘First Food: The Culture of Taste’. The book mentions a Moradabad special called ‘semul ki sabji’— prepared with the buds of the red silk cotton flower. For this, you need to cook the buds with potatoes, onion paste, ginger and garlic paste, tomato paste, red chilli powder, turmeric powder and garam masala, tempered with mustard and methi seeds. The book tells us that the yellow-green flowers of a tree called rai, found in regions around Ranchi, are cooked with potatoes and tomatoes by the local people, or just fried and eaten.

In this season of flowers, when every roundabout is bursting with colour, I have been thinking of a salad with flowers. Place some edible gulmohar flower petals and nasturtium flowers in a dish, and drizzle with a citric sauce. And, yes, add some rose petals, too. That’s r-o-s-e, rose.

Fiori di zucca fritti
Italian traditional dish

Pumpkin (or zucchini) flower pakora

Ingredients

• Pumpkin flowers 8
• Besan 4 tbsp
• Rice powder 2 tbsp
• Onion seeds (kalonji) ½ tsp
• Red chilli powder To taste
• Salt To taste
• Oil For frying

Method

• Make a batter with besan and rice powder.
• Add onion seeds, salt and chilli powder. Keep aside.
• Wash the flowers gently. Remove the stem and the stigma, keeping only the petals.
• Dip each petal in the batter and deep fry.
• Serve hot, with steamed rice and masoor dal.