In Good Taste
Purple Craze
Culinary lavender adds a hint of flavor to everything from lemonade to grilled meats and fish
BY
Jean Galton
PHOTOGRAPHY
Kate Baldwin
STYLED BY
Christy Nordstrom

Lavender is making the move from fancy spas to restaurant kitchens. The sweet scent of this aromatic herb is just as likely to be flavoring your chicken salad as perfuming your favorite soap.

Le Gourmand chef Bruce Naftaly uses lavender “because it’s part of a very old French tradition, not because it’s trendy. More people are cooking with it because more people are doing more interesting food.”

But you can’t use just any lavender, explains Sara Naftaly, pastry chef at Le Gourmand. “You need to use the right varieties. If you use the wrong one, like Grosso, it can give a medicinal flavor to food.”

Sara prefers fresh lavender, never dried. And she’s used the herb in almost every form of her desserts, from ice creams and sorbets to cakes and flavored jellies. She even uses it in dessert wines and syrups for drinks in the restaurant’s bar. “Fresh lavender gives a rounded floral flavor to food—you’ll get a much less fruity flavor with dried. And fresh lavender goes really well with most fruit, [such as] blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, rhubarb.”

But Bruce Naftaly has his own ideas and freely admits to using dried lavender, especially when cooking and curing meats in the French charcuterie tradition, such as a dry cure he makes for beef tenderloin. He’ll underline lavender flavor even further with lavender smoke, using lavender branches to line his grill. But he doesn’t use the leaves, feeling they can impart a bitter flavor to food.

Not so at the Sand Point Grill. Charlie Durham prefers to use lavender leaves in his pork chop brine. “They hold up better in heat and over a longer period than the flowers. Sort of like using rosemary in a marinade versus some of the more delicate herbs,” he says.

For a supply of fresh lavender, visit any local nursery. If you prefer dried, you can purchase buds from PCC, Zenith Supplies or The Herbalist.

After trying out a couple of lavender-accented dishes, however, you may find you’re hooked. And if you want some poppourri as well—you may need to put in a few more plants.

Recipes:
Lavender Lemonade
Grilled Sturgeon with Lavender Shallot Sauce
Grilled Pork Chops, Creamy Polenta, Asparagus and Lavender Demi-Glace