Hollerkücherl (Elderflower Fritters)

There are maybe four weeks in the year when you can make Hollerkücherl. The elderflower, Holler in Austrian dialect, blooms from late May into June, and when it does, every hedge and garden fence and roadside ditch in Austria fills with those flat, creamy white flower heads that smell like summer distilled into a single breath. You pick them in the morning when the pollen is still heavy on the blossoms. By afternoon the scent fades. By July the flowers are gone and the berries are coming. This is a dish that exists inside a window, and that's part of what makes it beautiful.

Gretel always said that Hollerkücherl were the first thing she missed about Austria that had nothing to do with people. The taste of fried elderflower dusted with sugar, eaten standing in a garden while the batter was still crackling. She couldn't get elderflower in Kent the way you get it in Austria, where it grows wild and abundant and everyone knows exactly when the blooms are ready. On the trips we took together through the Salzkammergut, she'd spot the bushes from a car window and make us pull over.

The recipe is absurdly simple. You make a light batter with beer, flour, eggs, and a pinch of salt. You hold the elderflower head by its stem, dip the whole thing face-down into the batter, and fry it in hot oil until it turns golden and crisp. The tiny flowers puff up inside the coating. You eat it hot, dusted with powdered sugar, tearing the lacy fritter apart with your fingers. It tastes like flowers and honey and fried dough all at once, and there is nothing else in the world quite like it.

If elderflower isn't blooming where you are right now, wait for it. Don't try this with dried flowers or elderflower cordial or anything that isn't a fresh, fragrant blossom picked that morning. Austrian cooking is seasonal. That's part of what makes it honest.