Andre Organic Lavender

My love affair with the smell of lavender began in Provence when I was sixteen. With plenty of purple fields, gorgeous sunshine and blue skies, I thought I was in heaven at the time, and I swore when I left that I’d go back to live there some day. So imagine my surprise when on the road to Sanford I found a lavender field and the Andre Organic Lavender Shop.

With a particular recipe in mind, I visited this shop in the middle of the Santa Ynez Valley and was amazed at the variety of lavender products I had never seen before. Among them, a Lavender Breath Spray, which packed a strong punch of refreshment and woke us right up and out of our wine haze. Lavender, amongst its many uses is also a known natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic. So, if a bit powerful, a good lavender breath spray should clear you of bad breath for life!

I was looking, in particular, for culinary lavender. Culinary lavender is collected from the flower buds, picked before blooming, dried, and sifted through carefully for any impurities such as dirt or leaves. The buds are what contain essential oil from which commercial scented oils are derived, and the collection of culinary lavender is a careful process that requires good timing and patience, of which I have neither.

A lavender-essences selling shop in Kent in the UK, has this to offer on cooking with the herb:

“Lavender softens the tartness of acidic fruits. Even just a few drops of cooking essence added to a saucepan of stewed fruit can make a big difference to the taste. The flavour of lavender in savoury recipes is enhanced by being used in combination with coriander seeds.  Fresh lavender spikes make an unusual garnish for meat and fish dishes and the flavour is particularly good alongside fennel, oregano, sage and coriander seed.”

Which plainly outlines what you need to know about cooking with it for both sweet and savoury dishes: Use it sparingly!

The Andre lavender farm grows at least 10 different varieties of lavender, and my nose is not yet fine tuned to distinguish different lavender scents by name. Coming from England I am more used to the scent of English and French lavender, whereas many of these scents seemed to contain a higher level of camphor. There are at least 39 known species of the plant. For my recipe (available below), I chose a “Vera” kind, which was the mildest of their culinary varieties available for sale.

Tending the store was a very knowledgeable and very friendly lady called Barbara, who informed me of their picking processes and the ins and outs of culinary lavender for my cooking. She also cautioned the strength of the culinary lavender buds I purchased. Too much, and your baking will turn bitter, or choose the wrong kind and have the adverse reaction of making anything you’re cooking taste like soap. She did this while, with the patience of a saint, she sifted through a box of lavender buds in front of her to ensure the end product is a pure as possible. So keep that in mind if you purchase anything from there: Each product has been sifted through by Andre Organic Lavender, bud by bud, by hand.

The first time we passed the Lavender Shop on the way to Sanford‘s* wine tasting room, Brian actually refused to stop. I guess it was getting dark and the shop wouldn’t have been open anyway, but it can look suspicious from the outside if you aren’t really looking for it. I put it down to the reindeer outside, which reminds me of Christmas but seems out of place in the month of May. Walk inside and you’ll be delighted you did. Aside from being a very relaxing scent, I’ve never seen a shop so original and so inspired by their craft.

* Sanford Winery, which has undoubtedly profited from its appearance in the movie Sideways, was a little disappointing for us. Although it claims a long history of positive reviews, we didn’t feel particularly at ease in the tasting room, which was newly refurbished and largely impersonal. For the price of a bottle, I’d easily recommend other pinots or chardonnays for less than $15. However, Sanford does have a fascinating series of monthly webisodes if you’re curious about the winemaking process.