Recipe ideas blossom at market

Spring brings us many treats to eat at the farmers markets: hollyhocks, pansies, bachelor's buttons, borage and nasturtiums.

Not exactly what you were thinking of, right? If you're like most farmers market shoppers, sugar-snap peas and strawberries take top priority this time of year. After all, summer will arrive all too soon – and its heat will yank these delicacies away from us.

But it's worth your while to devote some attention to flowers. For just like strawberries and sugar-snap peas, the best season for edible flowers is before summer hits.

"Right now is the best because there's more abundance now than later," says Sharlyn Pasquale of Il Giardino Organico, a farm that sells its edible flowers and produce at the Vineyard farmers market in Fresno.

Last week, Il Giardino picked broccoletti, chive and thyme flowers.

K.M.K. Farms, another vendor at the market, sold cucumber-flavored borage flowers; peppery arugula flowers; and flowering thyme, sage and chamomile.

At Flower Garden of Madera's stand, John Warner brought in a plate of his edible flowers. Along with spicy nasturtiums, sweet pansies and pea flowers that taste just like peas, there were flowers that lend more color than flavor: calendulas, hollyhocks and bachelor's buttons.

Much of his selection goes to Nueva Frontera Produce, the stand next to his. Maria Abuelas of Nueva Frontera mixes Warner's flowers with her own in a bagged salad mix.

Add these to the ubiquitous squash blossoms, and it's no wonder that chefs such as Karsten Hart of Erna's Elderberry House get excited about edible flowers.

"I come up with ideas based on the market," Hart says. "It instigates ideas and forces you to look at things differently."

At Erna's in Oakhurst, arugula, borage, chamomile, thyme and rosemary flowers adorn salads. Hart tucks flowers into terrines.

He steeps chamomile in fish broth.

"The chamomile gives this a really nice nose to it," he says.

Hart is thinking of infusing iced tea with sage blossoms, but he's not a fan of battering and frying flowers – a common technique.

"It's appropriate if the flower is bruised," he says. "But if it's perfect, you want to show it off."

For that reason, it's best to use edible flowers immediately, Hart says. But some of them will keep for up to a week if handled properly.

Hart recommends loosely wrapping flowers in a moist paper towel and storing them in a plastic container.

Before folks start experimenting with edible flowers, however, there are a few rules they should follow.

• Ask experts such as Warner if your flowers are edible. "Sweet peas are poisonous," he says as an example. "But the flowers from sugar-snap peas are edible."

Warner advises folks to consult reputable catalogs, such as Johnny's Selected Seeds. Johnny's uses a knife-and-fork icon to indicate whether a flower is edible.

Sharon Matson, a Fresno County master gardener, offers another way to determine the safety of a flower.

"There are common names for flowers that might fit more than one variety," she says. "You should know the botanical name and compare it." An example is the marigold. "Some are edible and some are not," she says.

• Be sure the flowers haven't been sprayed with chemicals.

"Unless you get it from an organic source," Matson says, "the nursery is going to use herbicides and insecticides that would be in the plant."

• Avoid flowers that grow near roads, Cathy Wilkinson Barash writes in "Edible Flowers: From Garden to Palate" (Fulcrum Publishing, $24.95, 250 pages). "They are contaminated from car emissions."

• When you do identify an edible flower, taste it before using it, Matson says. "Even from one year to the next, the flower might have a different taste." If you're cutting roses, you'll want to smell the flowers. "They tend to be more flavorful when they have fragrance," she says.

When harvesting flowers, Matson follows the advice of "Edible Flowers." She heads into her garden in the early morning after the dew has evaporated and clips the flowers that are at their peak.