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Rosewater For Cooking - Yahoo Recipe Search
Food.comA wonderful and very well known Regency recipe for individual cakes studded with fruit and flavoured with rosewater and almonds; I am sure Jane Austen would have served these for afternoon tea on dainty plates with her bone china cups and saucers! I remember making these with my Mum when I was little, and of course licking the wooden spoon and scraping out the mixing bowl! They are easy to make and are delicious with an afternoon cuppa or for a lunch box treat. I have not found out the true meaning behind their name yet - but maybe they were aptly named as they were "fit for a Queen" to eat! The use of rosewater and almonds is a lingering memory left over from our Medieval cooking days and was still very much in evidence throughout the Regency period. This recipe makes about 24 to 30 Queen cakes - depending on the size of your tins, but the quantities can be cut back with ease. However, they DO freeze very well, so maybe making a full batch is a good idea - as long as they make it to the freezer!Food52On the Indian subcontinent, the rice-based dish is almost sacred. Dare to call anything without mutton (or, at best, chicken) a biryani and you’ll hear “It’s a pulao!” before you can even finish the sentence. I tried it once on Instagram. That it boosted the engagement on my post was a bonus, but only a digital writer will understand that. For everyone else, a biryani with mutton is the real deal, and everything else is just a rice-based side dish. While potato is a regular feature in Kolkata-style biryanis, it is always accompanied by juicy chunks of lamb, and I'm a vegetarian. Then there's paneer biryani, but that's too mainstream for my liking. So one leisurely Sunday morning, I tried my luck with tempeh. Tempeh is essentially richly textured, fermented chunks of soybean; the reason it works well as a protein in a biryani is because of its intrinsic ability to absorb flavor. Unlike peas or carrots, tempeh gets denser when you cook it, and it can slurp up a lot of marinade within a short period. In the Mughal period—one theory says biryani originated in their royal kitchens—vegetarians who mingled with the court, especially the Kayasthas or the Rajput kings, always sneaked vegetarian meat alternatives into Mughlai dishes. Take, for instance, raw jackfruit recipes that lead us to beautiful biryanis, raw banana and moong dal that were folded into kebabs, and wheat gluten used to make keema, or ground "meat." So there was one thing I was certain of (and that gave me courage when developing this recipe): North Indian cooking had a history of dabbling with faux meats long before the term became trendy. Ordinarily, while cooking a meatless biryani, I'd marinate the vegetable (mostly raw jackfruit) for a few hours and cook it exactly like mutton, sautéing and then finishing it with parboiled rice. However, to make a tempeh biryani, I added one extra step: I grilled big chunks of marinated tempeh to supplement my biryani base, ensuring they were fully done and wouldn’t leave a raw aftertaste. While traditionally a Lucknowi-reminiscent biryani would be cooked in a dum pukht style, tightly sealed in dough so no steam can escape, this tempeh biryani is a fairly simple affair. The tempeh is precooked, and so finishing everything together with the lid-on method will do the trick. Though it's simple, this biryani certainly isn't light on flavor—notice how the smokiness of the tempeh from the grill pan mixes with the fresh notes of rosewater to vie for your attention.Food52This is my twist on the Indian mango lassi, that fruity and tangy yogurt beverage beloved by millions of Indians and Indian food fans around the world. Besides being tasty and refreshing, the lassi plays a sometimes crucial role when served with fiery Indian curries-- to cool the burn. I could have used a lassi on a flight long ago that took me to my junior year abroad in Singapore. The vegetables in my curry were vibrant and cooked to just the right texture. I savored each bite. I tasted the eggplant, potato, and carrot. Then I speared a delicate appearing string bean and bit down. Within seconds, I thought I was going to die. I had mistaken a fiery green chile for an innocent bean. My eyes teared. My throat was burning. I began to hiccup uncontrollably. My seatmate made sure I wasn’t choking and then pushed my flight attendant call button for me. The flight attendant rushed over and asked my handsome and distinguished appearing seatmate how she could help him, somehow blind to my gasping, tearing, and sweating. He pointed at me: “She needs a glass of water.” He was chivalrous, but wrong. The only way to extinguish the fire of an erroneously eaten chile is with yogurt. The basic formula for a lassi is simple: equal parts yogurt and icy cold water. The crucial first step is to get the best tangy, full-flavored yogurt you can buy or make. Next, think about flavor. Lassi is enjoyed in both sweet and salty forms, and both can be spiced with ginger, cardomom, saffron, rosewater, mint, and other flavors. Besides the plain, lightly sweetened variety, my other favorite is the mango lassi. Vibrant hued and fruity, the mango lassi doubles as beverage and dessert. I use Alphonso pulp to make my mango lassi smooth, sweet, and flavorful. To play on the dessert-worthy fruitiness of mango lassi, I’ve adapted it into a frozen yogurt with a subtle spicy undertone of ground ginger and a crunchy topping of chopped pistachios.Food52My paternal grandmother's grandfather made his way from Sabzevar, Iran, to Pakistan to spread Sufism. Persian cooking traditions endured in our family, even though my grandmother was born and brought up in Pakistan and later, married an Afghan. She knew how to elegantly bring Afghan and Persian cuisine together. (She was also adept at Ikebana, but that is a story for another place and time.) She would prepare this rice pudding, infused with saffron water, for Nazri, a religious vow of offerings of charity food to the needy. To prepare this, the rice is cooked till the separate rice grains disappear. Sounds like sacrilege coming from a Persian-Afghan kitchen, doesn't it? Don't be put off by this; the addition of rosewater, cinnamon, and cardamom makes a delicious dessert. I serve my guests a few tablespoons of this rich, fragrant pudding in a glass. Feel free to double it if you think 1/2 cup of basmati is not enough for 4 servings. NB: It is up to you—you can make the pudding so it is "all'onda" like risotto, or continue cooking it in the end to make it more thick.YummlyMake this wonderfully aromatic rice pudding for all the Valentines in your life this holiday. To make it, basmati rice is first soaked to remove the extra starches and then cooked in milk and crushed cardamom pods until the grains are tender and infused with the flavor of the spice. Sugar, raisins, and sliced almonds are added at the end. For more authentic flavors, add saffron and rosewater (appropriate for the occasion). Serve warm or cold, dusted with ground cinnamon.Food.comThis recipe comes from a cutting from a Sainsbury’s magazine article on Moroccan cuisine, that I’ve been saving since July 2001. I love rosewater, I love ice cream, but I’m afraid that so far this remains un-tested. But it does sound lovely and I know I’ll make it one day! This recipe is suitable for ice-cream machines, but you don’t need one. Cooking time is freezing time, but an ice-cream machine will be quicker. Posted for Zaar World Tour 2005.Food and WineSometime in the ’80s my mom brought our first microwave home and set it up on a large table at the back of our gold-wallpapered kitchen. My brothers and I crowded before it on our knees, as if around an altar, to properly worship it. The first thing my mom cooked was a teacup full of water—it simmered; she was sold. For our part, we kids quickly moved on to blowing things up. Hot dogs burst open impressively, their fissures spitting lava-hot juice into the air.Marshmallows were positively cinematic: At 10 seconds a jumbo marshmallow doubled, then quickly tripled, and then quadrupled its original volume. It stayed there at the overblown-bubble stage for a few suspenseful moments before suddenly exploding into a pale wrinkly pancake that progressed from the color of sand to coffee to burnt toast right before our very eyes. It was the lifespan of a marshmallow, birth to death, in one minute—and we were transfixed.I guess the wonder never left me, because when I make a pavlova, I feel the same thrill as I did when I was blowing up marshmallows. A pavlova is just an egg white meringue, solidified with a little cornstarch, and spiked with a tempering shot of vinegar, baked into a soft bed of sugar. Being a grown-up, I approach it in a much more controlled and scientific way, and stop sensibly at the point where the foam stabilizes just enough to hold, well before the white cloud can get sunburnt. My platonic-ideal pavlova is the size of a Barbie hot tub, still gooey at the center, and filled with tart cooked fruit, preferably rhubarb. I lay out the rhubarb in long bias-cut spears and bake them uncovered in a reduced wine syrup, ever so gently, until the rhubarb constricts in its own sugary juices—softening but never losing its shape or its spine-tingling tartness.To be nostalgically accurate, the only wine I knew around the time the microwave arrived came from the box that sat directly next to it, which was called Franzia White Zinfandel. It shot into my mom’s glass in a froth of pink bubbles as innocently as soda pop. For this syrup I rely on rosé—more classy and current, it reduces perfectly with the rhubarb juices into a lurid, floral pink syrup. The color of teen girl power trapped inside a Miami Vice sunset, its flavor is tame but latent.When I feel down, or dulled, or even when things feel just a little too matchy-matchy, I heed the old call to worship at the altar of white sugar. I go and whip up a pavlova just to prove to myself that the joy of that first overblown marshmallow, the seed of what I knew then, is still there.Food52Firni is a recipe that has found its way into our cuisine from Persia and the Middle East, and into the ancient kitchens of the Muslim emperors of India. A perfect dessert for the royal dining table, though made with seemingly simple ingredients, this was a dessert served cold, adorned with expensive spice such as saffron, rose water and topped with nuts and silver leaf, it has been a traditional dessert of festivity and celebration in our part of the world ever since. In my recipe for firni, I replace the need for slow cooking the milk down to thicken, with condensed milk and this also adds the sweetness without using additional sugar. The addition saffron is just a substitution, and is my way of celebrating my memories and firni's regal heritage.Food52Recipe adapted from A Domestic Cookbook by Malinda Russell. This is a serious pound cake (20 egg yolks!) and, with brandy and rosewater (still popular flavorings) and cooked icings (becoming more and more common), typical of the time. (Also typical of the time is the recipe in the book for Magic Oil, which includes laudanum, chloroform, and hemlock amongst the ingredients. But that’s another article.) Not much is known about Malinda Russell, for whom we can credit with this recipe, beyond what she said in her own words that open A Domestic Cookbook, the earliest known cookbook by an African American. I would quote verbatim, but instead I’ll just summarize with this: Her mother was the daughter of an emancipated slave, “one of the first families set free by Mr. Noodle of Virginia,” so by law, Malinda was born free. As an adult, she was twice robbed of her life savings made, at differing times, by working as a laundress, running a boarding house, and managing a pastry shop. Married for four years before the death of her husband and the single mother of “one child, a son, who is crippled,” she made her way from Tennessee to Virginia, back to Tennessee, and then onto Michigan during the Civil War. It was in Michigan where Malinda wrote and published A Domestic Cookbook. “Hearing that Michigan was the Garden of the West, I resolved to make that my home, at least for the present, until peace is restored, when I think of returning to Greenville, Tennessee, to try and recover at least part of my property.” It is not yet known if she ever made it back; research into her story has only just begun.
