Everything's coming up roses

AN IDEALIST IS ONE WHO, ON NOTICING THAT ROSE SMELLS BETTER THAN A CABBAGE, CONCLUDES THAT IT MAKES A BETTER SOUP. H. L. MENCKEN

Everything is indeed coming up roses. They are everywhere and it seems that this might be a particularly good year for them. Maybe it's all the rain - but then again, after our ten years of drought a few years ago, the plant that survived the best was apparently the rose. Gum trees and other natives died, as did a whole lot of other non-native stuff - though I noticed my neighbour's oak tree also survived well. But I digress. Back to roses. Sorry this is becoming a bit botanical, but I promise today's effort will include a lot of food. It comes of all of my walking - don't see a lot of food on the way - but I do see a lot of flowers - and last time it was roses. The ones above grow in a pretty wild way up near our gate. They are the dog kind of roses I think - not the classic red rose that florists sell. Though we have those too. And they do look lovely. Even the petals on the ground are beautiful. So romantic somehow.

The classic red rose, an ancient flower, has long been associated with love, particularly the red ones. I have pondered on this and come to the conclusion that it is because it is so perfectly beautiful, but only for a fleeting moment really. The perfect rose is perfect for no more than a day or so I would guess. Here is a photo of one of our wild rose bushes with roses in various stages of perfection. As you can see, once over their best they rapidly decline and end up looking really daggy - blowsy is the word most often used I think.

Here are some rather better tended roses I saw on my walk. Also in various stages of perfection. Some of them are the 'classic' type, some are the dog roses or eglantines.

rose-6

rose-5

And before I leave the botanical side of things I have often wondered why roses never caused the economic bubble that tulips did. People have been breeding roses for centuries after all - perfecting the colour and creating new ones. I was shown a Princess Diana rose the other day. But there was never the hyper excitement that the tulip caused - and the tulip doesn't last much longer than the rose in a perfect state. I have no answer for this.

But food.

For the English - and my background is English after all - the rose hip is the thing. Very rich in vitamin C, (20 times more than oranges), it is most often used as rose-hip syrup and made into a semi-medicinal drink. It seems you can also make jam from them and also a kind of schnapps.

ROSEHIP SCHNAPPS

500g reships 750ml Vodka, 1 tsp rosewater. Cut the stalk and ends off the rosehips and rinse. Place into clean resealable jar. Pour over vodka and leave in a cool dark place (back of a cupboard) for about 3 months. Strain through a double sheet of muslin cloth into a swing top bottle and present to your beloved with a red rose.

But it's really the middle-eastern brigade (and the Indians) who really use roses themselves both in the form of rose petals and as rosewater, which is made from the petals. We just use the petals to throw over the happy couple at weddings - we did this with rose petals from the garden for my son and his wife. Now why is that romantic? - because it absolutely is.

Apparently the English did use roses and rosewater back in the middle-ages and really up until the nineteenth century in various sweet dishes, but then they fell out of favour as being too cloying. And perhaps they are, so it is interesting to see it coming back into the very poshest of restaurants.

Rose-water first of all. I'm not a huge fan, and I'm not sure Claudia Roden (my Middle-East expert) is either but the very poshest of chefs seem to be embracing it these days. In her Mediterranean Cookbook Claudia Roden says:

"The type available here [England] in bottles is much diluted but you should still use it sparingly or it may seem that you are eating perfume. Try adding a few drops to a glass of fresh orange juice or even to water. The flavour is soothing and supposed to put you into a happy mood."

Greg Malouf, however, devotes a special section to rosewater in his wonderful Arabesque book. He documents the history of the rose in cooking, gives three recipes and a few quick tips. Less is more seems to be the mantra:

"a delicate touch can add an exotic dimension to many European desserts too. Rosewater can be added to cakes and biscuits, splashed into sorbets and ice-creams, mousses, fools and cooked creams or even added to a humble rice pudding for an exquisitely different sweet flavour.

Rosewater marries particularly well with fresh fruit. A favourite Moroccan dessert, for instance, is devastatingly simple - fresh orange segments are dusted with cinnamon and sugar and then sprinkled with rosewater. At home we often drizzle a little rosewater over fresh strawberries or a mixed-berry compote and serve them wit thick creamy yogurt for a deliciously easy summer dessert."

His recipes include a plum jam (or jelly) to which rosewater is added just before bottling.

To confirm his fruit + rosewater thesis I found one recipe for a summer drink that used rosewater and strawberries from a trendy Sydney restaurant called the Kepos Street Kitchen.

STRAWBERRY ROSEWATER FIZZ

200g hulled strawberries, 100ml raw sugar syrup (pour 500ml boiling water over 500g raw sugar, stir to dissolve), zest of 1 lemon, 1 tablespoon rosewater, crushed ice, 400ml soda water, 4 extra strawberries to garnish.

Put the strawberries, sugar syrup, lemon zest and rosewater in a blender and blend to a smooth purée. Top with crushed ice and soda water and stir well. Garnish with extra strawberries.

I'd start with less rosewater to test the taste. Add more as you like.

And now to the trendies. The first is from the chef of the moment, Yotam Ottolenghi who has a variation on Eton Mess. You can find the recipe here and it looks like this. Yum.

So far they are all very simple uses of rosewater really - just add a touch to something - as you would a herb or spice - but the difference it makes to the taste is outstandingly different - exotic, and ethereal. I suspect it's really one of those things you have to work at liking.

Then, for something completely different the super trendy George Colombaris has a rice pudding dish that uses a rosewater pastry, which is then cut into blocks and added to the final dish with banana and aero chocolate. It actually looks really yummy (see below). It's called Risogalo. Gourmet Traveller has the recipe for the rice pudding part but below the photo is the rest of it.

RISOGALO

Rosewater pastry - 125g butter at room temperature, 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract, or scraped-out seeds of 1 vanilla bean, 90g sugar, 1 egg, 250g plain flour, pinch of salt, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, 1 tsp rosewater, 250g icing sugar

In an electric mixer, cream together the butter, vanilla and sugar until pale. Add the egg and combine. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold through the flour and salt. (It should look like breadcrumbs.)

On a floured bench, knead the dough lightly until it forms a ball. Roll the pastry between two sheets of baking paper to a square about 15cm x 15cm and 3-5mm thick. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper, cover tray with plastic wrap and freeze for 30 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC fan forced.

When firm, cut the frozen pastry into small squares, roughly 1 cm x 1 cm (don't worry if they're not completely uniform). Bake the squares for 10 minutes, or until golden-brown.

Meanwhile heat the sugar and water in a small saucepan over a medium heat until the sugar is dissolved Remove from the heat and stir the rosewater into the syrup until combined. Remove the hot pastry squares from the oven, quickly dip them into the rosewater syrup and drain on a wire rack. Once cool, dust the squares with icing sugar and store in an airtight container until needed.

Caramel sauce - 100ml cream, 100g sugar, pinch of salt

While the pastry is in the freezer, make the caramel sauce. Gently heat the cream in a small saucepan. Set aside. Heat the sugar in a medium-sized heavy-based non-stick frying pan over a low to medium heat. Do not stir the sugar. Allow it to melt completely and turn amber in colour, being careful not to let it burn. This should take 8-12 minutes.

Stir the heated cream into the melted sugar until combined. Allow the caramel mixture to boil for 1 minute. Then add the salt, remove the pan from the heat, stir briefly and allow the caramel to rest for 10 minutes until cooled slightly. Strain the sauce through a mesh sieve and cool completely before serving.

To assemble - 2 large bananas, large block milk chocolate Aero, crushed into pieces, vanilla ice-cream

Into 8 ramekins or similar (1/2 cup capacity), spoon 2-4 tablespoons of warm rice pudding. Top each with 1-2 tablespoons caramel sauce, 1/4 banana cut into thin slices, a few cubes of rosewater pastry and a sprinkling of crushed Aero pieces. Serve with vanilla ice-cream.

Now for rose petals. A word of warning though. Don't use bought roses - they will almost certainly be sprayed with chemicals. No doubt you can buy some from really trendy and expensive food shops but I have never seen them. You need to use roses from your garden - and there again you have to have the right kind of roses, particularly when it comes to jam making - the main use of rose petals traditionally. Claudia Roden says,

"I have not been able to prepare [it] successfully with the roses from my own garden. The petals remained tough under the tooth. I have, however, recently been told that certain varieties of rose exist such as the 'wild eglantine' which would be suitable for jam making."

Most of the sites I found who talked about rose petal jam plumped for a version made by some Venetian monks. It looks beautiful and can be used to top yoghurt and other desserts as well as straight jam on toast.

Rather than giving the recipe here I shall simply direct you to the post with pictures and directions. Click here. The monks massage the rose petals with the sugar beforehand, so maybe this softens them.

But let's face it - I bet none of us are about to rush out and make rose-petal jam. You can probably buy it though. In specialist kind of supermarkets perhaps. Maybe even in the local one. Must have a look.

However, I did once make Jamie Oliver's harissa with rose-petals and it was pretty nice, although I don't think there was much of a rose flavour - but then perhaps my rose petals are not the right kind.

So there you have it - roses as food. Maybe even the food of love, for their use seems mostly to be in sweet things which are traditionally the things you woo your beloved with. And while rosewater can now be bought from your local supermarket or deli, rose petals are another thing altogether. But then maybe they will soon become available if they are popularised enough. Doubt I shall be doing much with roses though. Maybe George Colombaris' rice pudding for my next dinner party?