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

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel

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