Honeysuckle Tilapia

1 cup of honeysuckle blossoms
3 or 4 tilapia filets
3 heaping tablespoons of honey
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons Lemon juice
water


Gently rinse honeysuckle blossoms, being careful not to pull blossoms apart so as not to rise away the nectar. Place honesuckle blossoms into a small glass bowl. Pour in just enough water to cover the blossoms. Cover with glass lid or small glass plate. Put into microwave for about 3 minutes. When microwave cycle is finished. Don't remove them from the microwave. Leave blossoms to soak for about 5 minutes.


Chop the garlic or run through a garlic press. Place half in a coffee cup and add half the marjorine or butter. Add a tablespoon of honey. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of the honeysuckle tea.

Drizzle this mixture over both sides of fish and set aside to marinate.


In the meantime, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of honey, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and the rest of the garlic to honeysuckle in the microwave.


At this point, you will pour over the fish to cook it.

You can grill the fish, which is what we did. You can cook it in a George Foreman Grill, microwave it, broil or bake it or even "just put it in a crockpot". You can also wrap it in foil and put it in any of the above.

*If you choose, you can use more of the juice to grill and pour the rest of blossom mixture over the fish after cooking.


Author's Note: I am not one to cook with flowers. I know that honeysuckle is an edible flower and it is so plentiful this year and smells so good that I decided to try it.


I believe this would have been better for chicken than for fish. The fish actually was a little blander than I expected. Chicken would have better matched the flavor.


Since I've never cooked with honeysuckle before, I decided to taste the juice or "tea" right after microwaving it (before the honey and garlic). Yuk! With a capital K. I might as well have been eating grass. I almost ditched this project. But, I had to know how it all ended.


I don't know that I would do this again just because of the trouble of picking the blossoms and the carefulness of cleaning them, but on the otherhand... it would be a great home economics project or something fun just to do with the kids when they are a bit older. Next time, I will use chicken.


*Also, if you don't like to taste or feel of alfalfa sprouts, you won't like eating the actual blossoms. Instead of using the blossoms, you can mash them up with a hand-held potato masher just to make sure you get all the nectar and the strain the blossoms out, using only the left over juice.