How to Make a Rose Liqueur

Edible gifts are lovely, and drinkable gift even more so! There are quite a lot of jams and chutneys around this time of the year, and not enough liqueurs (in NZ, in Italy home-made liqueurs are traditional), so making homemade liqueurs gives me a point of difference! One of the first challenges for me, living here, is that you cannot buy the alcohol to make your own liqueurs, so I have to use grappa (sometimes vodka, but grappa is better). Fortunately I have a lot of grappa :-)

I am not getting much out of my garden yet a part from silver beet, leeks and herbs, but I do have flowers! And being an organic garden my roses are not sprayed, so they can be used for cooking.

I made jam in the past, and syrup, and cakes... for the liqueurs it is actually better to use the rose fruit, but it is not season for those.

So I picked some petals, very carefully. I would have picked more but the bees and bumble bees started flying around me, obviously upset by this big competitor who was taking away their meal!

I had 200 g of petals

I put the petals in a sterilized jar, and melted 200 g of sugar in 400 ml of water.

I poured the hot syrup over the roses and stored the jar away for two days, in a dark cupboard.

Actually, the best way would be to put the petals straight into the alcohol for a month, but I am rushing here, this is a Christmas present, I wanted and instant liqueur!

After two days the syrup had a beautiful pink colour, and the smell was amazing!!!

Strain the petals through a fine cloth, and hung it to drip, like for a jelly. And as for a jelly do not squeeze the bag, or the syrup may get cloudy. Let it drip overnight. When I make jelly I hung the dripping bag with a broom handle over two chairs, but here the quantity was so small...

I improvised and hanged it over my kitchen mixer (btw, this is a very new purchase, and it changed my life!!!) Collect all the juice. I had 400 ml. You can squeeze the remaining petals over another cup, and make a sweet cup of rose tea, yum!

Now to my distillery! I decided to do a 50% alcohol, using a 40° grappa. So I got 800 ml of liqueur, which I put in pretty bottles.

One is a present for my friend Sue, who loves these kinds of things. Also, when she visited me in Italy last summer she tried a rose liqueur and loved it. A good gift for her, I think!

The rest? Well, I had to gift it, but also to try it out, so I took it to the Italian school. I have one class, and I was covering two classes for two teachers who went to Italy. The students were all willing to try

:-), liked it, and seemed to be all still alive and well! And they want the recipe, so here it is!

Sorry Luca and Martina, you missed out, but Sandra had yours :-). And sorry about the pics below, they were taken with my iphone and it was quite dark. Students: siete tutti bellissimi!

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Mezze Maniche with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Since I had some left over mushroom sauce from yesterday's dish , today I made some pasta. I heard from other bloggers about the Garofalo pasta brand, in NZ I could only find it in one shop, and it was too expensive even to consider, so I thought that I should try it while I am in Italy. I choose mezze maniche for this dish. Mezze maniche with mushrooms I cooked the mezze maniche al dente. In the meantime I warmed up the pan with the left-over mushrooms and added 250 ml of cream. Then I added some freshly chopped Italian parsley and some freshly ground pepper. I drained the mezze maniche and passed them in the pan with the mushroom and cream sauce. They tasted great! Photos by Alessandra Zecchini©

Paccheri with tomato, parsley and garlic.

Paccheri are hollow pasta tubes that look like rigatoni or tortiglioni, but with a difference: the paccheri tubes flatten once they are cooked. Usually the have very rich sauces, but I am one for 'less is more' these days, and so here I just warmed up a ready made Italian tomato passata ( a good one ). Once the passata was hot I added some salt, extra virgin olive oil and finely chopped Italian parsley with garlic. These days I am chopping a lot of parsley and garlic together, it is too early for basil, and parsley taste really good in Italy! Also, I like the idea of having a cooked sauce but with raw herbs and garlic in it: the taste changes completely. Simple but really effective!!! If you are not vegan you can add some ricotta to this. Photos by Alessandra Zecchini©

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