Marigold Tortilla Wraps

By Mel Evans

We tend to forage for wild and native plants at Forest School. However, spending more time at home has led me to experiment with the flowers I am growing in my garden.

Marigolds are a popular bedding plant as their cheerful bright flowers are produced all summer long. They also work as a natural pesticide as they repel flying insects and soil bound Nematodes which attack crops such as tomatoes.

There are French Marigolds and larger African Marigolds, but confusingly they all originate in Mexico and South America. Here they are used to make impressive Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos) decorations.

Although we found a little Marigold cooking inspiration on the internet, they don’t seem to play a major role in Mexican recipes. Possibly because the taste is not overwhelming. All Marigolds are edible, but apparently they don’t all taste good! We had a nibble on ours and they didn’t seem to taste of much!

Their colours are so striking though that we thought we would attempt to make some tortilla wraps and decorate them with the petals. These worked really well and the petals held their colour through cooking making for a cheerful picnic!

We made the dough by combining 250 g plain flour, half a teaspoon of salt, two table spoons of veg oil and 100 ml of water. The dough was kneaded for 5 mins and rested for 15 mins.

The dough was divided into 6 equal pieces,

We rolled each piece as thinly as we could.

We spritzed the tortilla with a little water before sticking on the petals.

We cooked the tortillas on both sides in a hot dry pan.

The wraps were left to cool.

Then we filled them for our picnic.