Meadowsweet

If you have been meandering along the country roads for the past few weeks, you’ll have seen swathes of fluffy cream flowers along the verges, tiny sweet fragrant blossoms clustered together in irregularly branched cymes. The plant grows 2-4 foot tall and is called meadowsweet. The legendary Tudor botanist and herbalist John Gerard called this wildflower that blossoms from the end of June until mid-September ‘Queen of the Meadows’, and described how it ‘delighted the senses and scented people’s houses’. It is sometimes called mead wort and thrives in clammy meadows and ditches and along river banks. 

Meadowsweet delights me too and I love it for a myriad of reasons, not only the fact that it comes into season just as the elderflowers fade. I’ve been using the latter in a myriad of ways but from now until September, it’s the turn of frothy meadowsweet. It has many medicinal qualities and is known to contain salicylic acid, one of the components of aspirin and has pain relieving and anti-inflammatory properties. Herbalists value it for its many medical qualities, bees and hoverflies love it too.

But we can also enjoy it in the kitchen. I’ve been adding to my repertoire of meadowsweet recipes for the past few summers. It flavours custard deliciously which can then be churned into meadowsweet ice-cream. You can imagine how fragrant meadowsweet panna cotta and crème brûlée are – infuse the milk for rice pudding. It also makes a delicious cordial, lemonade, spritzer or
a simple tea. Strew a few blossoms on the base of a cake tin while making a sponge and/or add some to a lemony icing. Try flavouring end of season rhubarb compote for a delicious surprise and I’ve had success with both rhubarb and ginger meadowsweet jam plus it also combines well with gooseberry to make a delicious compote. How does meadowsweet gin and tonic sound? Infuse gin for a week or two as you would sloe or damsons. Strain and enjoy. 

Keep your eyes peeled for meadowsweet as you drive through the countryside. Pop it into a vase on your kitchen table, it will perfume the entire kitchen while you decide on delicious ways to enjoy it…

Meadowsweet Tisane

From spring onwards when the herb garden is full of an abundance of herbs, we make lots of tisanes and herb teas. All you need to do is pop a few leaves or flowers into a teapot, pour on the boiling water – and allow it to infuse for a few minutes. Infinitely more delicious than the dried herb teabags.

You can combine herbs and flowers including: meadowsweet, lemon verbena, rosemary, sweet geranium, lemon balm, spearmint, peppermint...

Bring fresh cold water to the boil. Scald a china tea pot, take a handful of meadowsweet flowers and crush them gently. The quantity will depend on the strength of the herb and how intense an infusion you enjoy. Put them into the scalded teapot. Pour the boiling water over the flowers, cover the teapot and allow to infuse for 3-4 minutes. Serve immediately in a glass or china teacups.

Rhubarb and Meadowsweet Compote

Serves 4

450g (1lb) field rhubarb

450ml (16fl oz) stock syrup (dissolve 175g/6oz of granulated sugar in 300ml (10fl oz) of water and boil for 2 minutes)

4-6 sprigs of meadowsweet

Cut the rhubarb into 2.5cm (1 inch) pieces. Put the cold syrup into a stainless-steel saucepan, add the rhubarb and meadowsweet. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer for just 1 minute, (no longer or it will dissolve into a mush). Turn off the heat and leave the rhubarb in the covered saucepan until just cold. Remove the meadowsweet, serve with lots of softly whipped cream sprinkled with meadowsweet blossoms.

Meadowsweet Syrup

Makes 400ml (14fl oz)

225g (8oz) sugar

300ml (10fl oz) water

10-15 meadowsweet heads

To make the meadowsweet stock syrup: Put the sugar, cold water and meadowsweet into a saucepan. Bring slowly to the boil. Boil for 2 minutes then allow it to cool. Strain and store in the fridge until needed.

Meadowsweet Lemonade

3 lemons

225ml (8fl oz) meadowsweet syrup (see above)

750ml (1 1/4 pints) water

ice

meadowsweet heads

Juice the lemons. Add the syrup and water. Mix and taste. Add ice and meadowsweet to garnish.

Meadowsweet Gin

It’s great fun to organise a few pals to pick some meadowsweet and have a meadowsweet gin-making party. Either enjoy it neat or put a measure of damson or sloe gin in a glass, add ice, a slice of lemon and top it up with the finest tonic.


50g meadowsweet (heads)

350g (12oz) granulated sugar

1.2 litres (2 pints) gin

Put the meadowsweet into a sterilised glass Kilner jar and cover with the sugar and gin. Seal tightly.

Shake the jar every couple of days to start with and then every now and then for 2-3 weeks by which time it will be ready to strain and bottle. It will improve on keeping so try to resist drinking it for another few months.

Edible Flowers

Cornflowers, primroses, forget-me-nots, day lilies, marigolds, roses, lavender, nasturtiums, dahlias, chrysanthemum…

I love to scatter flower petals over desserts, cakes and biscuits. Judiciously used they also add a little magic to starter plates and salads. Of course the flowers must be edible but a wide variety of blossoms are, as well as the flowers of broad beans, scarlet runners, sun chokes, peas and sea kale, but remember they will  eventually grow into the vegetables so pick sparingly.

The canary yellow zucchini and squash blossoms are also irresistible not just to tear into salads but also to dip into a tempura batter - stuffed or unstuffed.

Even the cheery little nasturtium flower with its peppery taste are both cute and delicious stuffed with a little herby cream cheese. We also chop the gaily coloured nasturtium blossom and add them into a lemony butter to serve with a piece of spanking fresh fish.

Fennell and dill flowers have a delicious liquoricey, aniseed flavour. They too add magic to fish dishes and broths but also to some pastas and of course salads.

Image from one of our 12 week students: http://themarkettableblog.com

Dahlia flowers are gorgeous sprinkled over salads, I particularly love them scattered over an heirloom tomato or potato salad.

Thyme flowers are various shades of blue and purple – we love to use them to garnish little pots of pate or to sprinkle over a bowl of silky onion and thyme leaf soup.

Sage and hyssop flowers are even more intensely blue and they two give a vibrant and perky flavour to salads and summer vegetable dishes.

The kombuchas and water kefirs that we serve at the school every day also include edible flowers which introduce the yeast of the area into the gut enhancing drink.

To add to your bucket list

If you have compiled a little list of things you’d like to do before you die you might like to add; 'take an Aer Arann plane to the island Inis Meáin’...It only takes six or seven minutes but it’s a memorable flight in a tiny Cessna plane. Check in at the friendliest little airport (Connemara Airport) where you’ll be weighed in with all your bags and handbags. Travel light because if you and your baggage are too heavy you’ll have to wait for the next flight or take a ferry from Doolin. Once airborne you’ll be out over the sea in minutes and then a glimpse of the tiny fields of Inis Meáin surrounded by dry stone walls, ancient and hauntingly beautiful, a few cattle here and there and fields full of wild flowers. 

You’ll wish the flight would last longer as you taxi along the runway at Inishmann Aerodrome, towards the bungalow with the control tower on top. The fire-engines all standby but fortunately no need.  A warm welcome to Inis Meáin, the least visited of the Aran Islands and for me the most enchanting. It comes as a shock to hear Irish so clearly and beautifully spoken and to realise that English is the second language on this island. Padraig Pearce came here to improve his Irish and so did Synge whose thatched cottage one can still visit.

No ‘hurdy gurdies’ here just one shop and one pub and miles of tiny boreens to walk or cycle through, some of the boreens still have a rough surface and a strip of grass growing along the middle, here and there edged with harebells and ladys tresses and ox eye daisies. When I cycled my bike along I was on my way to Cromall at the south end of the island to watch a couple of traditional currachs (albeit with motors attached) pulling up lobster pots.  

The profusion of wild flowers in the fields reminded me of the meadows of Transylvania. I’m sure it rains occasionally in Inis Meáin but somehow the sun always shines when I’m there. We stayed at the lovely Inis Meáin Suites, two blissfully relaxing days being cherished by Marie-Therese and nourished by Ruairi’s pure and delicious elemental food – a taste of that place, of the island, of the produce from their garden and the surrounding sea, a very special place – you’ll need to plan a year ahead – bookings are open for 2018 sometime in November.

When you get there make time for a visit to Inis Meáin knitwear, beautiful, beautiful knitwear. Some utterly simple, others incorporating the traditional island patterns and the changing colours of the sea and landscape.

Visit Synge’s Cottage too and Dun Chonchuir or “Conor's Fort”. Pop into the church to see the Harry Clarke stained glass window and try to take in a ceilidh in the village hall where everyone from 9 to 90 taps their toes, swings and joins in for a Siege of Ennis and The Walls of Limerick...aahh that’s what memories are made of.