Rose Brandy

Someone told me once that 70% of what we taste is actually smells. Personally, I love the taste of the smell of flowers. Frequently, as in one of my favorite candies, Chowards Violet Mints, floral flavors taste a bit like soap, but I guess I kind of like that. It makes my mouth feel elegant on the inside. I love rose water in a lassi and once made a baked Palestinian dessert with layered pita, cream, rose water and pistachios.

To me, roses are synonymous with the sunny wealth of summer. Rose Brandy is an easy way to utilize this temporal flavor. I only use home-gardened flowers because those long-stemmed supermarket roses are weak fragranced from over hybridization and are farmed with toxic chemicals which endanger the underpaid workers. Preserving the beautiful blossoms picked from the yards of dear friends just tastes better. 

I made a batch last summer with foraged petals from all over town. Having a bottle sitting a shelf in my room during the cold, gray winter months was like having the sweet essence of summer stoppered up in my sanctuary. I used it all year for sipping and baking. I made a sticky, strange and delicious dessert by simmering purple rice with coconut milk and the brandy. I once mixed it in coconut sorbet with lemon, and recently added a bit to a plum clafoutis. It's quite versatile and unusual. More roses can be added as found, and the longer it sits the more intense the flavor is. It's so concentrated that I only ever used a tiny bit, and because of the preservative powers of alcohol and sugar, it keeps all year long. The end of last year's bottle is still perfectly good, the petals intense and succulent from soaking in honey and brandy.

Rose Brandy

1/3 rose petals

1/3 honey

1/3 brandy

I picked the roses from the side of my friend's house, selecting only the good, fully developed blossoms and a few nearly open buds. These round white roses had a very unusual, sweet smell, almost like vanilla. If I get a chance, I might add some deep red roses later on. I didn't rinse them off because a friend told me you're not supposed to when making tinctures, and this is kind of like a tincture.  They had a few little bugs on them, so I shook the petals off and refrigerated the bag overnight. 

I pushed the petals into a clean decanter, then covered them in brandy and honey. 

I capped and shook the decanter vigorously, bruising and swishing the petals in the syrup. After sitting for a while, no matter the color, the petals will turn the same color as the brandy.

I put it on my windowsill because food makes great decoration. It should be nice and rosy in a month or two or three.

Blueberry Chutney

Blueberry picking is a piece of cake. Unlike the blackberry bush with it's tangled vines with vicious claws, the blueberry bush is practically asking to be picked. The bushes I picked were heavy with berries that were be shaken easily into a bucket, and another bucket, and another. There were about six bushes in front of Kate's old house, and we were free to pick them clean.

I have a lot of jams and jellies and conserves and sweet fruit preserves, so much that I am going to have to eat toast every day this winter, and give most of it away. On my canning shelf there is a distinct lack of the savory, so what to do when I picked all these blueberries? 

About a month ago I made plum chutney from a tree at the end of my street, but the plums were so small it only made four jars between two people. It was delicious, though, and I have since used almost a whole pint jar on various meals. Chutney is like jelly for dinner. On quinoa, rice, last night we ate it on thai green curry. So... we split them up and Kate made a batch of Blueberry Huckleberry Jam, and I made Blueberry Chutney (modified from this recipe):

8 c blueberries

2 red onions, sliced up

3 c red wine vinegar

1 c raisins

5 dehydrated pineapple rings, chopped

3 tbs candied ginger, chopped

4 tsp brown mustard seeds

2 tsp cinnamon 

2 tsp chili flakes

1 stick cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

pinch salt

Filled three 12 oz, four 8 oz, and two 4 oz jars 

(we put them in all different sizes for various gifts and to swap with other canners)

The recipe called for golden raisins, which they only have at the East Side Co-op (to my consistent disappointment--I love golden raisins, they are the butter of the dried fruit family), but I looked around in the bulk section and decided on these smaller red raisins and some dehydrated pineapple instead. It worked well enough. I might use more pineapple next time. 

So, washed and hulled all the blueberries, threw them in a big old pot with all the other ingredients and let it boil.

Cooked it until it thickened and my whole house smelled like sweet sweet vinegar. It was a surprisingly deep purple color. Blackberries always end up being quite a dark red when cooked, but blueberries seem to actually have blue in them. 

Poured the boiling mixture into sterilized jars and waterbathed them for 15 minutes.

So far, I ate it this morning on leftover curry...pretty good. Extremely vinegary, and I might put more of almost every ingredient except blueberries in it, especially ginger and mustard seeds. Still, I'm happy to have it.

Blackberry Preserves

"The medicines of another time, the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass."

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Picked about two gallons of blackberries today with Mr. Jean Nagai.

The neighbor kids asked me why we were doing it and I said because they'll taste like summer in winter.

Rinsed them off and brought them to a boil with two cups of sugar. Betty Crocker's blackberry preserve recipe calls for one cup of sugar for every cup of berries, totally obliterating the fundamental tartness of the berries, so this time I taste-tested it and only added as much as seemed necessary. The liquid never became syrupy, and is lighter in color than the highly sugared versions I've made. 

Poured them in sterilized jars, sealed and waterbathed them for ten minutes. 

A patch of sunlight in the dark.