FOOD MEETS FLOWERS

I never really thought about flow­ers beyond the last-minute vari­ety you see for sale at New York bode­gas and Lon­don gro­cery stores. But that all changed when old friend Kat Flower approached me with the idea of her cross­ing the Atlantic to col­lab­o­rate on a flower work­shop. She linked up with new friend Lotte & Bloom to give a flo­ral design class to a group of seri­ous flower lovers at our din­ing table. I spent the day in the kitchen with Jason prepar­ing the food, so I didn’t get to expe­ri­ence the flower work­shop too much. But dur­ing those brief moments when I’d poke my head into the orga­nized chaos tak­ing place in my liv­ing room, I was amazed to see a group of peo­ple (stu­dents came from as far away as Corn­wall and Spain) work with what was essen­tially the same palette and come up with some­thing totally dif­fer­ent. Leaves, branches, flow­ers every­where. Nar­nia in the house. It was beau­ti­ful. As far as Gour­man­diz­ing is con­cerned, we did what we do: cre­ated some sea­sonal, home­made eats for the after­noon. I orig­i­nally intended to cre­ate a menu cen­tered around edi­ble flow­ers, but didn’t want to poi­son any­body. So I drummed up a tast­ing menu of five courses made up of small bites. Some high­lights included cured Ser­rano ham with cava apple jelly; quail eggs on a bed of goat’s cheese, sun­dried toma­toes and oat cakes; and Jerusalem arti­choke soup with a pork belly crou­ton. We also had amaz­ing bread, an award win­ning loaf cour­tesy of my man Fer­gus Jack­son at Brick House Bak­ery. Both the food and flow­ers were robust and aromatic.