from the garden

Don't the roses in my garden look lovely?



It's purely by chance - I have the ungreenest of thumbs, but these appear to have thrived on a diet of neglect.

I have recently been reading Josceline Dimbleby's memoir Orchards in the Oasis, which talks of her time in Damascus as a child and the wonderful scents of orange blossom and rosewater in the sweets.

Its a wonderful book.

I felt inspired to try making my own rosewater for use in my cooking. Since there were so many roses climbing up the side of the house I thought they wouldn't come to any harm if I pinched a few of the petals. Rosewater can only be made with petals that haven't been sprayed with anything nasty (like pesticides), and I know my own haven't (that would be a result of the neglect).

So here's what I did:

Step 1 - Pick half a pint of rose petals


Step 2 - put in a saucepan (ceramic not metal) with 1 teaspoon of honey


Step 3 - Pour a pint of boiling water over the petals

Step 4 - Simmer until the colour of the petals bleaches out into the water (10-15 minutes)


Step 5 - Cover and leave to infuse overnight

Step 6 - Strain the liquid into a sterilised jar and refridgerate.

I'm hoping that this will keep for a couple of weeks, but I plan to try using it soon as I'm VERY curious about what it will be like. I confess I have no frame of reference as I don't think I've tasted rosewater before. I shall be blissfully ignorant if mine doesn't taste right!

Moroccan meatballs

With all the Christmas roast meat I really felt like a different kind of dinner this week. A while back I spotted that a fellow Daring Cook had tried out a Moroccan meatballs recipe for our December 2010 challenge. In that version it was served with a poached egg (poaching was our challenge for the month). Looking for a slightly less rich dish after all the Christmas excesses I actually served it without the egg, but it would clearly be delicious with one. We had steamed rice and spinach instead.



The Moroccan Merguez Ragout recipe has a wonderful blend of spices, both in the meatballs and the accompanying ragout. I'm always going on about how much I like Moroccan and Middle Eastern food, so no surprise that I liked the dish, but Dan also particularly loved this, so thanks to Audax for a very delightful dinner!



Find the recipe here.

more middle eastern explorations

Sumac onions with hazlenut dukka, white fish, and couscous for dinner tonight.

And so, hurrah for the fact that I have found another use for pomegranate molasses! I bought it for making fesanjan a little while ago. It turns out it also very nice indeed with red onions.

I'm not completely convinced that the combination of the dukka, fish, and onions was the best use of the 3 elements, but I really liked them all individually. The dukka would be good mixed with olive oil and spread on sourdough toast, the onions would be fantastic with lightly spiced burgers or roasted vegetables. I used Tilapia for the fish, which was a nice firm white fish.

So a successful foray, with room for improvement. First time I'd used sumac too.

Here's how to make the onions (enough for 2):
Fry 1 1/2 thinly sliced red onions in approximately 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Fry them over a low heat until soft, then stir in approximately a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses. Turn the heat up and cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes. Stir through a teaspoon of sumac and serve.