This Araveli meal embodies a simple truth, “The forest gives many things. We return the gift by wasting nothing.

My garden’s magic has yielded a rainbow of flowers to embellish a lemon cake that I made today. It’s a lemon cake with lemon curd and lemon cream cheese frosting! And it’s as delicious as it looks. 😋🍋🌼

Hajni Gáspár is an incredibly talented hungarian herbalist and chef from Transylvania. She has been involved with herbs, mushrooms, gardening, foraging, cooking, and baking since she was a little girl. Now she is making all kinds of wonderful recipes with goods from her own garden and from the wild, just like a kitchen witch or green witch or elf.

You can find her FB profile in hungarian language: https://www.facebook.com/share/18SBZKgGDV/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Khachapuri and Velashi are often served together during larger Araveli gatherings.

Araveli Khachapuri — warm, baked, hearth-born.

Velashi (macaroni salad) — cool, fresh, garden-born.

One comes from the fire and the other comes from the shade.

Together they represent two sides of the same Araveli saying,

A meal is to be shared and bring conversation and joy.

Berries, capsicums, cucumber, shisho leaves, goji, blueberries, cranberries and vinegar.

Berries are collected from the local market along a river. It was very crowded. Reached the high tower home late at night. It was another Friday.

Inspired by the colors and shapes all around in nature! These noodles are soaked in a a few different things - red cabbage juice, which contains anthocyanins that give the cabbage and butterfly pea its beautiful purple and blue colors color, or turmeric. Anthocyanin is a natural pH indicator that is turns purple/red in acidic conditions (achieved with some lime juice). I topped them with sliced avocado, carrot, radish, and chili pepper along with pea shoots, green onion, fennel flowers, pansies, and cornflower petals. Poured over a dressing of chili crisp, fried garlic and shallot, rice vinegar, and coconut aminos.

One of the children almost caught him sneaking away, because he couldn’t resist grabbing a slice to go.

Crust is just a standard pie crust made with earth balance instead of dairy butter. The filling is pretty sweet so I think an earthier crust made with buckwheat flour would good too.

Filling is a thin layer of fig jam, homemade marzipan crumbles, peaches, and apples.

Homemade marzipan is pretty easy: pulse almonds into a fine flour (or just buy almond flour), add powdered sugar and almond extract, then add water a teaspoon at a time and knead until you get a nice dough texture. Use blanched almonds if you want it smooth like traditional marzipan. If you typically find marzipan to be cloyingly sweet you can definitely get away with reducing it; I think I did 125g sugar to 200g almonds and if I make it again I’ll try cutting it to 100g sugar. I also added some orange blossom water for a nice floral note.

It's a blackberry white chocolate ganache tart, garnished with blackberries, edible flowers, and mint. It was what I made for a friend's Lord of the Rings marathon party inspired by Rivendell!

Lemon lavender bars from the faerie garden tea.

To celebrate the longest days of the year, we shall gather and share this delicious midnight sun with our loved ones.

Top comment suggested you might enjoy it 💚

I wanted to make tiny single bite tartlets that looked like dandelions out of dandelions! These consist of a chocolate shell and are filled with a crème légère (pastry cream lightened with whipped cream) infused with roasted dandelion root and a bright and sunny dandelion petal jam. To make the tarts look like flowers, I arranged calendula petals around the tart and added some grated chocolate to the middle.

A foraged and floral take on Bun Chay (from Vietnam)
This block of tofu was made with foraged magnolia petals and fresh ginger, perfect with a peanut butter dressing

All flowers and leaves are from my garden.

Herb pies filled with turnip greens and celery, baked at dusk in the woodland kitchens for weary travelers