fougère naissante, originally uploaded by jean.avenas.

Edible Fougere Recipe: Fiddleheads in Lavender Butter

Fiddleheads are the budding, coiled “leaves” of ostrich ferns ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris). The fiddleheads are present in early spring, and are considered a delicacy. They have a very similar to asparagus in both flavour and texture.

This recipe pays a culinary tribute to the “fougere” family by using an edible fern in combination with lavender.

1 lb (or one large bunch) fresh fiddleheads
3 Tbs. butter
1 Tbs. lavender buds
2 Tbs. white wine
Salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

In a small saucepan, melt the butter with the lavender buds. Add salt and spices.

1. Boil the fiddleheads in water until tender.

2. Strain the water, and boil again (this will remove bitterness as well as possible toxins such as tannins in the fiddleheads).

3. Strain the butter through a sieve, to remove the lavender buds.

4. In a frying pan or shallow sauce pan, lightly sauté the fiddleheads in the lavender butter, and add white wine. Cook until most of the wine has evaporated.

5. Garnish with dry lavender buds or sprigs of fresh, flowering lavender tops.

6. Serve warm or in room temperature.

Jalapeno Chocolate, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

On the hottest day of the year, I've made the crucial mistake of making chocolate truffles. And not just any truffles, truffles that are stuffed into hot peppers! Where did I get this idea? I've wintessed, in some crazy birthday party of a friend, people pouring tequila into halved jalapenos and after drinking the burning liquor, chewing up on the entire pepper! Being neither a fan of jalapenos nor tequila, I've decided to adopt the idea and make something that is not for a faint-of-heart like me. And I've decided to add some mojito flavours to the mix...

The biggest problem is that the truffles melt in your fingers before even going through 1/4 way into the batch...

Well, aside from the meltage factor, the crucial mistake turned out quite good, actually. I've made two experimental batches - both with dark chocolate. I've split the ganache into half, so I can make two flavours and not have too many truffles at hand... This proves to be quite detrimental to the balanced diet I try to maintain on a daily basis - unless I make sure I have company every single evening...

Both batches had a bit of vanilla extract and rum added to them:

Jalapeno Truffles:
First batch was flavoured with lime and spearmint essential oils. Some of it I've stuffed into those green hot peppers (these are actually not jalapenos, because I couldn't find small enough jalapenos. Instead, I've used the hotter than fire serano peppers... Ouch!). They are topped with very thinly sliced fresh and sweet lime.
The result?
If you're like me (meaning: don't mind some spiciness but don't seek the fire-hot sensation on your tongue), you may not want to bite into the pepper itself (unless you belong to the other kind of people). You may just want to scoop out the chocolate. After chilling in the fridge for several hours, the chocolate have absorbed enough hotness to satisfy me. The strange (in a good way) thing is: this combination, along with the pepper, tastes a lot like fig! I don't know why, but it certainly does.

The remaining of the batch, I've turned into "normal" truffles, which were very minty and quite delightful. Espeically if you love mint. The lime was in the background, quite quiet...

Lavender & Nutmeg Truffles
The second batch was where the real surprise was. This is the first time I'm making truffles with no perfume inspiration behind them, yet the result was immensely perfumey! Some kind of mysterious alchemy is going on there. The nutmeg I've used is nutmeg absolute, which is well-rounded and full bodied, smoother and sweeter than the nutmeg essential oil. The lavender is lavender Mailette from France, which is very floral and light. The two notes, along with chocolate, clash to create a very peculiar flavour that feels so familiar... I'm transported to the Wadi where my friend Zohar used to live, yet I can't say if it's her house that I'm smelling or if its a particular wild herb that I can't recognize, in the midst of the wadi... Either way, I'm enjoying these immensely. They are floral, exotic, unusual, strange, yet the flavour is very harmonious. I can't believe I'm saying it, but think these are my favourite truffles so far!

New Tree Chocolate, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

I spotted these miniature chocolate packages at Capers yesterday, and couldn't resist getting a couple to try (they were placed right before the checkout, of course, the oldest trick in the book and they still manage to get me!). As you can see, they are $3.79 for a little sample package for a chocaholic on-the-go of three little chocolate tablets weighing 9gr each. These made-in-Belgium chocolates (for the US based company New Tree) are not organic, and rather pricey in my humble opinion.

I picked two to try:

Tranquility (milk chocolate with lavender) and Renew (dark 73% chocolate with cassis). I wouldn't have picked the lavender one unless it was for one of my chocolate truffle workshop students who raved about a lavender infused hot chocolate, and the lavender infused steam milk that she now drinks before bed time. I had to try it just for her!

The list of ingredients on the Tranquility mentioned natural lavender flavour and lime blossoms extracts. The term "natural lavender flavour" seems quite suspicious, especially after tasting it. It was quite awful and I have a feeling that rather than just putting in some lavender extract or essential oil, there is a lot more to it, and it ruins the flavour. It tastes artificial, somehow.

Renew, the blackccurant one, lists "blackcurrant with other natural flavour" and "grape extract". Maybe there is real blackcurrant there, maybe not. It's hard to tell with this kind of labeling. But what I am sure about is that it tasted marvellous.

I am not too keen to try the other flavours, because most of them did not make sense to me so to speak. I absolutlely don't dig their "Forgiveness" - dark chocolate with lemon, which sounds quite unforgivable to me. Ginger in chocolate does not appeal to me either as a flavour, and the other more agreeable and sensible choices were simply non-original (bitter orange with milk chocolate; coffee with dark chocolate or cinnamon and milk chocolate). But the cassis one was quite something, so I may come back for more.

Otherwise, the marriage between aromatherapy and chocolate craving seems quite scary to me...