You're a Flower, You Are

The flower preserving experiments continue. This time I decided to try to make rose petal jam, from a recipe I found in The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea many years ago. We have a very old rosebush with dense pink blooms that smell just like perfume, so I figured it couldn't be all bad, right?

Well. It wasn't all bad. I think part of the problem may have been the fact that I don't have a kitchen scale (though I really need one; I have a lot of British cookbooks), so I have only the vaguest idea of how much a half pound of rose petals actually is. But even then, I think the 5 cups of water the recipe called for would have been excessive. Maybe not, maybe I just needed more roses. Who knows?

So I started out like I was supposed to, pulled off the petals, chopped them up, covered them with sugar and let them stand overnight for two days, because I'm lazy like that (it was perfectly fine, sugar makes a very good anaerobic barrier, if that is the word I want). When I was ready, I dissolved a little more sugar in the water and added lemon juice and the rose petals and their lovely rose scented sugar. It was immediately obvious there was way too much water, but I thought it would cook down.

It didn't, of course, not so you'd notice, and I could see after a while jam was not going to happen from this. I ladled off a quart! of the liquid, which was a pretty coral color and smelled lovely, thinking it would be a good syrup, like the lavender syrup I made a couple of months ago that turned out to be a Very Good Idea. (Lavender syrup over sliced strawberries = oh hell yes). Then I set everything aside until I could pick more roses the next day.

Which I did, and added the petals (unchopped this time) to the previous ones, and took out a couple more ladlesful of the liquid just to be on the safe side. I combined this with the syrup from the day before along with another handful of rose petals and set that to reduce and thicken a bit. 

I still had my suspicions about the jelling properties of my jam, so I threw in a tablespoon of powdered pectin for insurance. I cooked this for some indeterminate amount of time, certainly longer than the 5 minutes the recipe called for, until a little of it on a cold plate started to thicken, then poured it into my jars and sealed them.

Et voila, two half-pints of rose petal jam and a honey bear full to the eyes of rose petal syrup. (You can see my previous dandelion and violet jelly in the background.) I was very pleased with the way the color deepened the longer I cooked both the syrup and the jam, considering the roses were pink and not red. Another bonus was the somewhat candied rose petals I strained out of the syrup and later ate over Greek yogurt. How Oriental of me! (And Oriental is the word I want in this case.) They were delicious and surprisingly chewy. Definitely something to try again.

So the roses were the clear winners in the Things To Make With Flowers contest this year, unsurprisingly. The dandelion jelly was OK but not good enough to bother with, and the violet jelly is fine, but  not as intense as my jaded palate would like. I will probably try that again next year, though; Lord knows we have no shortage of violets.  

Also, I think I may concentrate more on making the flavored simple syrups, since I actually use those. They're fabulous in hot green tea or over sliced fruit or yogurt. I like the idea of jams and jellies, but in practice I hardly ever eat them, because I prefer a savory breakfast to a sweet one. Now I need to go do something with all the mint that's coming up.

When Life Gives You Dandelions

Been making jelly out of wildflowers, because really, if I don't, who will? That's how I roll.
First I made dandelion jelly, because I saw a blog post on dandelion macarons, and as usual I was seduced by the lovely photography. And there was a recipe for the jelly, which seemed pretty straightforward, so what the hell.

I picked a bunch of dandelions.

I pulled off all the green stuff (the calyxes? I think so.) Mildly tedious, but I was sitting on the front porch on a beautiful spring day, so that was nice.

Then I steeped the flowers in boiling water for around 10 minutes, added sugar, lemon juice, and pectin, and let it cook down for about 700 hours, maybe a little less. Poured it into sterilized jars, and after all that ended up with 3 whole quarter pints, huzzah!

And it's not bad. It mostly tastes like lemon juice and sugar, with a certain je ne sais quoi. It's fine.

Since I had a lot of dandelions left over, I thought I'd try this recipe  for dandelion quick bread, and it wasn't bad either. Pretty much like any quick bread that doesn't have fruit or nuts or anything else more interesting in it. Toasted with the dandelion jelly it was quite acceptable, but I doubt I'd bother again. I didn't take any pictures of it, just couldn't be arsed. 

We had plenty of violets too, and they're one of my favorite flowers, even if some people think they're a weed. I don't care, I think they're beautiful, and I like violet flavored things, so again, what the hell. Picked a bunch of violets, etc, and used the same recipe I used for the dandelions.

That turned out much better, if rather faintly flavored. Your common violet just doesn't have as much scent or taste as viola odorata, which is what I understand most commercial products use. I tried growing some years ago, but they never came to anything. If I ever see any plants or seeds I'll have to try again.

I added a little creme de violette to bump up the taste a little, and 700 hours later (give or take), violet jelly! 

(I could say "Viola!" as many people seem to think "voila" is spelled, but I'll restrain myself.)

And thus, dandelion and violet jelly. A pleasant little experiment. You could try it. It's fine. (Although I did just have a rather more exciting idea of making hibiscus jelly using dried hibiscus infusion, which could be a very good thing. Or regular tea, maybe Earl Grey....)

When In Doubt, Cook Some Squash

I've been feeling extremely lazy lately. I don't think I've actually been, I've read and studied a lot and last week we babysat my niece, which is a full time job, but it's mainly that I haven't made anything to speak of. If I haven't produced anything, I just don't feel, y'know, productive. 

So today I added a few photos and updated some items in my Etsy shop, since I haven't made anything new to put up in a while. Every little bit helps, I suppose.

 Also, I came up with a new recipe in my ongoing quest for Things To Do With Squash. This one turned out actually very good, though I had an inkling it might, and it's very easy, once you make the sauce. I guess you could call it Sesame Summer Squash "Noodles", though I'm always suspicious of recipes with words in quotation marks. (Plus, why are they called "sesame" noodles anyway, when they only have a small amount of sesame oil in the sauce? Presumably there was more at one time.)  So maybe Summer Squash In  Peanut Sauce is a better name. 

Whatever, I used the sauce recipe from the The 1997 Joy of Cooking, more or less. Basically it's peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar of some sort (I used red wine), hot sauce (crushed red pepper also works), and sweetening (honey in this case), and then I usually use garlic and ginger paste from the Indian grocery. Mix all these things to taste, adding a little more of this and that until you think it's balanced. The Joy calls for black tea to thin it out, so I tried it this time, and while I don't notice much of a tea flavor, it didn't hurt it either.  

Then all you do is slice your squash, yellow or zucchini or both. I did 1 small squash in longish julienne since I wanted it to have a noodlish sort of form, but you could slice it any way you like. Then I sliced about half a carrot into thin coins, and around a quarter of an onion into thin slices. Steamed all that together in the microwave for about 2 1/2 minutes, just until it was tender. Of course you could always saute' it, but I wanted to limit the fat, what with the peanut butter and all. Then I tossed it with a couple of tbsps of the peanut sauce,  and garnished it with a little chopped cucumber, and I must say, it was damned tasty. Also fairly healthy, and most importantly in the summer, it uses up some squash. It's colorful, too.

When the moon was full a couple of weeks ago I took some (I think) cool photos on my evening walk. Of course they don't quite have the glow of the real thing, but it was very lovely in the dusk with the Queen Anne's Lace blooming everywhere and the moon coming up over the hill.

Rumors of Spring Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

It's almost 1:00PM on May 4th and it's still only 48 degrees. It's been raining since forever and there are pools of standing water in the yard. All the shrubs around are green but the trees are only grudgingly putting out leaves. Can't say I blame them. To brighten things up, here are some pictures I took last month on a rare sunny day.

Violets and lilacs, my favorite flowers.

California poppies in my grandmother's wildflower garden.

Some lovely pink tulips. Amazing how much better they do when they don't get mowed down.

Tulips at the corner of the yard. I'm very pleased at how well these have done, considering they were potted bulbs from Kroger that I saved and replanted. I'm actually going to have to divide them this fall. (Assuming that's when you divide them. I think it is.)

A closeup of the pink ones. I love the triangular shapes they make when they're opening. I did some drawings of them last night. I want to work them up into a design for embroidery or painting.