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05/26/2000 Archived Entry: "Bert Greene's Ziti Salad, The Lavender Question"

FYI
For those of you searching in vain for the recipe, Bert Greene’s Famous Ziti Salad is in the Maven’s Diary archive. It’s the entry for June 7, 1999. Just click on June 1999 in the archive list and you’ll see it. As is too frequently the case, the search engine here can’t find it, no matter what key word you put in.

Culinary Use of Lavender
I was stumped. A listener asked if it was the lavender leaves or flowers that one uses to flavor food. She wanted to make her own “herbes de Provence” blend, which always contains lavender, as well as fennel seed, summery savory, basil, marjoram (or oregano), rosemary, sage, and thyme. I was stumped. I know I always see beautiful lavender flowers or buds in the blend. They’re so obvious. But my listener said her plant’s leaves where very fragrant, too.

I looked it up. Both Rodale’s “Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs” and Burpee’s “Herbs” from their American Gardening Series say that both flowers and leaves can be used to flavor food. I think that’s definitive enough, although I did get an e-mail from a listener who looked it up in what I consider a less reliable source and only the flowers and buds were recommended. So I did another look-up. Interesting. Sharon Tyler Herbst in her excellent “Food Lover’s Companion” recommends the flowers as a culinary herb, but the leaves for making a tissane or tea. In any case, there is no indication that the leaves might be toxic, a concern of my listener.