SpiceLines

Delirious bumblebees cling to Dutch lavender in full bloom at Sunshine
Lavender Farm in Schley, North Carolina.

Is there anything more sensuous than a field of lavender in bloom? At the moment gentle waves of icy blue, mauve, and deep violet are billowing all around me and I’m half-drunk on the flower’s warm, camphorous scent. The air is vibrating with the hum of delirious bumblebees clinging to bobbling purple spikes. A dragonfly zooms by, slows, then hovers, wings a blur. Like the rest of us, he’s in a lavender daze.

This is the peak moment for lavender in central North Carolina. It’s no coincidence that Sunshine Lavender Farm, located in the tiny town of Schley, is also holding its 3rd annual harvest festival this weekend. About a hundred sun-struck lavender worshippers have come to drink in the vision of a thousand plants in glorious but fleeting bloom. Artists have set up easels in the sea of purple, families are clipping armloads of fragrant stems, camera-toting gardeners have come to find out how to keep their own plants from rotting in the South’s humidity. Me, well, I’ve come to drink lavender lemonade and find out if you really can cook with lavender.

Sunshine Farm’s lavender grower-in-chief, Annie Baggett, wearing dark glasses and summer straw hat, is mingling happily with the crowd. Every 30 seconds, she is button-holed by someone who wants to know what kind of lavender will survive here (sturdy French lavandins like “Grosso” and “Provence” because they resist fungal rot better than the beloved English L. angustifolia) and why her plants are mulched with gleaming white oyster shells (to reflect sunlight, keeping plants dry and disease-free). With her 100-watt smile, she may be the most blissed out farmer I’ve ever met—and why not, since she spends her life inhaling a fragrance renowned for stress relief.

The word lavender is said to come from the Latin lavare, to wash. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, laundry women were called “lavenders” for their custom of placing sprigs of the fragrant herb in piles of freshly washed linens. A mainstay of the perfume industry, lavender also has a long history of medicinal use, from relieving chest congestion to healing insect bites. In The Complete Book of Herbs and Spices, Sarah Garland notes that “All the old herbalists describe the refreshing effect of lavender for ‘a light migraine’ and ‘swimming of the braine’.” Hospitals in Europe waft the scent into surgical waiting rooms, and modern aromatherapists tout the soothing effects of scented bath oils, candles, and room sprays on the frazzled psyche.

All this is a plus for Baggett, who never intended to grow the herb. The first year on her farm, she optimistically planted a community vegetable garden, but found that deer were her most avid consumers. “They ran through the fields, laughing, with spaghetti squash in their mouths,” she tells me. The next year, intent on finding deer-resistant plants, she installed a test plot of 5 lavender bushes. The deer went elsewhere, so she collected as many varieties as she could find. Today, she has 1,500 well-manicured lavender bushes in a field of less than one acre. Most of them are either “Grosso” or “Provence”—75 percent of the French lavandin oil crop comes from the robustly aromatic “Grosso”—but she has squeezed in other favorites such as “Hidcote,” “Jean Davis” and “Dilly Dilly.” “There are hundreds of varieties!” she says.

I pondered this while sipping a refreshing glass of lavender-infused lemonade. Americans have never taken to cooking with lavender, but the French, especially in Provence where there are vast fields, do use it in the kitchen. Lavender is sometimes mixed into herbes de provence, a blend of thyme, basil, rosemary and marjoram that is traditionally used to season beef, lamb and pork stews, soups, and as a rub for grilled fish. Locals make lavender infused liquers, and in Patricia Wells at Home in Provence, the American writer gives a recipe for Lavender Honey Ice Cream. But although one suspects that French lavender farmers must occasionally grill a whole lamb over dried stems, or infuse a creme anglaise with a few stray flowers, written recipes are hard to come by.

In The Lavender Garden, Robert Kourik suggests that lavender foliage can be substituted for rosemary in almost any dish. Both are members of the enormous mint family, and both have a powerfully aromatic flavor with resinous, slightly bitter undertones. His recipes include one for lamb chops cooked over lavender sprigs and garlic and another for boneless chicken breasts laid on top of fresh lavender stalks and cooked on a cast iron griddle over an open fire. Another idea is to use Grosso’s tough square stems to skewer shrimp marinated in lemon and olive oil; grilled over charcoal, the shellfish are imbued with just a mysterious hint of lavender.

And then there are desserts. Used in moderation, lavender blends well with lemon and other citrus flavors, makes a lovely summery ice cream, and adds a floral aroma to baked goods such as shortbread and pound cake. The Celebrate Lavender Festival Cookbook from the Sequim, Washington Lavender Growers Association takes this idea to another level with recipes for Lavender Crème Caramel Tart and Baked Figs with Ricotta and Lavender Honey Walnuts. Wherever your culinary experiments take you, the real secret is to use lavender with the greatest restraint, particularly if you are substituting the dried flowers for fresh blooms: A good rule of thumb is to use half as much dried lavender as you would fresh. And If you buy lavender, be sure that it is culinary—unsprayed—quality.

Culinary lavender can be ordered from www.adrianascaravan.com or from www.sunshinelavenderfarm.com, which also has bundles of organically grown dried lavender stems for grilling. Robert Kourik’s book, The Lavender Garden and the Celebrate Lavender Festival Cookbook may be ordered from www.lavenderfestival.com, which also provides information about the 10th Annual Sequim Lavender Festival, which will be held July 14-16, 2006.