Nasturtium garlic bread

Who doesn’t love garlic bread - and by adding a few flowers you can make it look and taste really fancy!

This is hardly a recipe but it is an absolutely brilliant way to celebrate your locally grown garlic and to taste it in every mouthful. This is a ‘compound butter’ which is really just a fancy chef way of saying butter with a flavouring added. If you don’t have nasturtiums then add flat leaf parsley or peppery rocket. Calendula petals would also be a great addition.

A lovely artisan baguette is delicious, but you can also massively improve a supermarket baguette by making your own garlic butter. If you don’t fancy putting the butter on bread you can also shape it into a small cylinder and then pop it back in the fridge. Once it is firm cut slices of the butter to add to roasted or steamed vegetables, baked potatoes or steak.

Makes one baguette

50g salted butter, softened
3 large garlic cloves
10 large nasturtium leaves
10 nasturtium flowers
1 baguette

Preheat the oven to 160°C

Chop the garlic cloves and then crush to a paste with the tip of your knife. Adding a small pinch of sea salt will help with crushing the garlic. Alternatively use microplane to grate the garlic.

Roughly chop the nasturtium leaves and remove the petals of the nasturtium flowers. Add the leaves, petals and crushed garlic to the softened butter. Use a wooden spoon to mix well until the garlic and nasturtium is evenly mixed through the butter.

Slice the baguette evenly along the length of the bread. Cut most of the way through the bread but not all the way through, you want the baguette to remain in one piece. Use a butter knife to spread the butter into each of the cuts you have made in the baguette. Try to spread the butter on both sides of the bread in each cut.

Wrap the baguette in tin foil and put it in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes until warm. Open the tin foil package and serve immediately.