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Blue salad

Green alkanet is a fantastic edible flower that looks great in a spring salad or on puddings.

Week 14

There’s no need for me to panic about having enough salad leaves now. I’ve got plenty growing indoors, and the first crop of balcony peashoots will be ready in just over a week.

Now my attention is turning toward garnishing those abundant salads with edible flowers. And there are plenty of candidates for that: the violets that grow so enthusiastically in the chalky Chiltern soil, the violas on my balcony, kale flowers, dandelions and the wonderful green alkanet.

Serving any food with such a brilliant blue garnish is a way of making your guests sit right up with surprise. Those eating lunch at my table yesterday asked whether the blue flowers I had scattered rather liberally across the salad were “absolutely definitely edible”. They are.

Green alkanet is a member of the borage family. When not flowering, you might mistake it for its relative comfrey, and the two bear many similarities, from their large hairy leaves to their big taproots. The leaves aren’t edible and would not be very nice to ingest anyway, but the flowers are perfect as a garnish. They also look brilliant suspended in ice cubes.

This week I sowed

Basil, peas.

Don’t forget to follow others taking part in the salad challenge on twitter using the hashtag #saladchat. And if you don’t have your own blog but want to write a post about your own experience of the challenge, then use our Your Blogs section.

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