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Rosey posey pinky toesies
Jun. 1st, 2012 05:42 pmI made rose petal jam, which turned out an interesting kind of weird, and rose petal beads which are still drying/shrinking/hardening.
Mom has an Audrey II rose bush she'd been trying to kill for three decades--including major construction over the roots--but it kept coming back with such vengeance that the last ten years she'd switched to laissez faire/collapse tactics. She whacks it down to the ground each fall and by May it fills 50 cubic feet with arching canes and clusters of small red single blossoms, mildly scented like black pepper and fresh green moss.
Some years, she prunes it severely midsummer (before it eats the neighbor's car) and gets another bumper crop of blooms. She whacked it down on Tuesday, and sent me home with a couple pounds of organic (i.e., never sprayed and hence edible) rose petals.
For the jam I worked the petals with turbinado sugar and lime juice, and simmered them in a simple syrup for half an hour; I could probably sieve the petals out and leave the syrup (a bright beet magenta, delicately floral), but they're tenderly toothsome so I've left it rustic. So far I've had it in tea, which overpowers the sadly mild flavor, and over vanilla ice cream, which was pretty and played nicely with the pepper-scent.
It might be good in a cocktail, if it were a mite stronger in flavor.
For the beads, I mashed some petals plain with a little water and cooked them in a double boiler until they reached a paste consistency, then shaped them into beads strung on toothpicks. They're hard to shape, more like leaf litter than clay, and even smoothing may not make them pretty (we'll see). Today is day three, and they're about half the size and getting quite hard. In all, this might be worth the effort if one had very aromatic petals; I think I released all the aromatics during cooking.
I've got another pound of petals left in the fridge, I might give the jam another shot.
Mom has an Audrey II rose bush she'd been trying to kill for three decades--including major construction over the roots--but it kept coming back with such vengeance that the last ten years she'd switched to laissez faire/collapse tactics. She whacks it down to the ground each fall and by May it fills 50 cubic feet with arching canes and clusters of small red single blossoms, mildly scented like black pepper and fresh green moss.
Some years, she prunes it severely midsummer (before it eats the neighbor's car) and gets another bumper crop of blooms. She whacked it down on Tuesday, and sent me home with a couple pounds of organic (i.e., never sprayed and hence edible) rose petals.
For the jam I worked the petals with turbinado sugar and lime juice, and simmered them in a simple syrup for half an hour; I could probably sieve the petals out and leave the syrup (a bright beet magenta, delicately floral), but they're tenderly toothsome so I've left it rustic. So far I've had it in tea, which overpowers the sadly mild flavor, and over vanilla ice cream, which was pretty and played nicely with the pepper-scent.
It might be good in a cocktail, if it were a mite stronger in flavor.
For the beads, I mashed some petals plain with a little water and cooked them in a double boiler until they reached a paste consistency, then shaped them into beads strung on toothpicks. They're hard to shape, more like leaf litter than clay, and even smoothing may not make them pretty (we'll see). Today is day three, and they're about half the size and getting quite hard. In all, this might be worth the effort if one had very aromatic petals; I think I released all the aromatics during cooking.
I've got another pound of petals left in the fridge, I might give the jam another shot.
