It was always a serious purchase, not least because the shop assistants wore white lab coats. Going to La Maison du Miel in Paris, a specialist honey shop, was something I used to do every year. It seems ridiculous now that you can get everything online (including honey from the Maison – go, have a browse) but doing without its French lavender honey was out of the question.
For periods I would often go to bed thinking about having it at breakfast. Without knowing much about it, I had been seduced into honey appreciation, rejecting those that are filtered and heated and put in squeezy bottles (from which they often stubbornly refuse to be squeezed) in favour of honeys that are raw, that taste of a place. It can sound precious to care about the honey you buy, but honey is as much to do with the terroir from which it comes as wine, coffee and chocolate. If flavour matters to you, caring about honey is another of the small things that make life better, but it’s also a miracle of nature that honeys as varied as wines are being made every day. Raw honey, honey that hasn’t been heated or processed, is what your toast needs.
Single-origin honeys are not honeys from one particular plant, but from one geographical area. Bees rarely fly far from their hive so you’re getting a specific flavour of a particular place (and that isn’t always in the countryside, there are plenty of urban honeys around). Monofloral or single-species honey has nectar from a particular plant, such as lavender or heather. Polyflorals contain nectar from several different plants and are often called ‘wildflower’ or something similar.
Lavender honey is quite potent – floral, peachy, slightly resinous – and sums up so much about a particular place. Raw French lavender honey is, for me, like eating years of holidays. Even the smell can take me there. Greek thyme honey and Greek pine and fir tree honey are strong (the tree one is resinous). I like acacia honey for its lightness, and buckwheat honey for its nutty, woody tones.
I use both basic and strongly flavoured raw honeys in dishes where they will be subjected to fierce heat. It’s hard to find the nuances in delicate honeys, such as acacia, so you need a powerful one, or save your money and go with basic. A favourite midweek meal is chicken joints marinated in honey, soy sauce, ginger and garlic, so I don’t use acacia for that. The honey in ice cream is heated gently, so you can appreciate its flavour.
Not all cooking is about applying heat – sometimes it’s about combining. Catalans make the simplest dessert, serving a fresh cheese (not unlike ricotta) with nuts and honey drizzled on top (it’s called mel i mató). Distinctive honeys can make a dish, especially when served with cheeses: drizzle Greek thyme honey over griddled halloumi; serve chestnut honey (rich, complex and malty) with pears and blue cheese; lavender honey works beautifully with goat’s cheese; acacia honey (light, gently floral) with ricotta and baked apricots.
You can always have honey at its most simple, spread on bread or spooned on yoghurt. I have a favourite jar – I eke it out – of the most intense floral honey I’ve ever tasted. I had Ivan tea (or willowherb) at a restaurant in Moscow to which they added a teaspoon of honey. They wrote down the name – in Cyrillic letters – on a slip of paper. I found it in a food market there but I’ve no idea where it comes from. The slip of paper is lost. I’ll soon have finished this jar. With things as they are, I’m unlikely to get this honey again. I will remember its scent and flavour as that of a different time.
On doctor’s orders, Diana Henry is taking a break from her column. We can’t wait to have her back on these pages, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy these previous favourites from her archive
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