everything's coming up roses

i think one of the things people most often ask me when i tell them about my preserves is 'yeah but what do you actually do with them?'. with the more obvious preserves like marmalade, the answer is simple, i eat them (and give jars to ed and friends i visit). with slightly more obscure preserves like my preserved lemons, or the rose preserves i made recently, the answer is that i cook with them. there's something satisfying in cooking with things you've made yourself, it has a kind of building-block feeling to it, like you can trace the finished product back further than you could if you'd simply bought the components. it can be traced even further back if you've grown or picked the ingredients yourself. it's totally satisfying to be so involved in the processes of the things you eat. it seems like the closer i get to the source of my food, the closer i want to be; it's a bit of a circular thing.

i don't know that i mentioned, when detailing the process of preserving my japanese rose petals and hips, that rose flavour is an obsession of mine. i drink rose tea, i put rose petals in my gin and juice, i stew white peaches with a few drops of rosewater all summer long, i wear rose lipbalm, i buy myself big bunches of tea roses in ice cream colours and bury my face in them every time i pass them. when ed and i were in barcelona i ate the world's biggest rose and pistachio ice cream, and it combined so many obsessions (rose flavour anything, ice cream, in particular pistachio flavour, serious sugar hits, and super bright colour schemes) that i didn't even notice ed taking the opportunity to sneak a photo of me like he usually does when i am distracted:


so yeah that is basically what we call a defining kirsty mitchell food moment, as captured by the most persistent paparazzo i know (who, incidentally doesn't like rose, which is brilliant cos it means more for me; i'd feel bad, but he probably feels the same way about bacon or something).

with an obsession with rose as huge as mine, it's no surprise that i already had ideas of what to make in mind when i was boiling up hips and petals to jar. well, less so with the hips, as never having actually tried rosehip syrup before, i had to gamble on what would work.

what i did with my rosehip syrup was make a gloriously fruity, sticky version of chelsea buns, using the recipe from the river cottage bread handbook, which is now a firm favourite. i filled them with dried cranberries, and used rosehip syrup instead of melted butter. i also glazed them with rosehip syrup reduced down with a little sugar. and here we have the result:

these were amazing. rosehip syrup tastes like red berries but has the kind of baked-apple tartness that works well with sticky, pillowy buns like these. i'd put in the cranberries initially as a kind of aesthetic thing, but flavour-wise i think they worked out better than currants or sultanas ever could. i did actually take some down on a impromptu visit to london, but they didn't get eaten before they staled, so there can't be a comment from my esteemed blogging partner on these until i make the next batch. which will probably happen very soon.

i had more of a clear cut idea about the rose petal jelly. what i wanted to do was make a nod to that summer culinary powerhouse, the victoria sponge, but with flavours that are a bit less done to death than strawberries and whipped cream (we already know that i think too much Great British Tradition is distinctly oppressive, and that strawberries are a pretty wimpy fruit). i had in my mind a vision of a raspberry and rose victoria sponge, something uncharacteristically delicate and ostentatious compared to my usual baking fare. so i did what i always do when i need to make a mental baking image a reality, and turned to nigella lawson. more specificallly, her victoria sponge recipe in how to be a domestic goddess. she gives methods for making it in a food processor and for making it 'by hand'. naturally i make mine by hand because i always feel like 'shortcutting' on baked goods is cheating somewhat, that and i love a good whisking session:

victoria sponge

225g unsalted butter, very soft
225g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
200g self-raising flour
25g cornflour
1 teaspoon baking powder (if using the processor method)
3-4 tablespoons milk

2 x 21cm sandwich tins, about 5cm deep, buttered.

preheat the oven to 180 degrees c/gas mark 4. if the tins are loose bottomed, you don't need to line them, otherwise, do.

i always make this basic sponge cake in the food processor, which involves putting in all the ingredients except the milk and processing till you've got a smooth batter. then pulse, pouring the milk gradually through the funnel till your cake mixture's a soft dropping consistency. because i'm clumsy, i habitually make a too-runny mix, but it doesn't seem to matter. likewise, if your ingredeints are too cold you may end up with a batter that looks curdled: this doesn't seem to make a difference to the baking either (though it might get in the way of impressive rising).

if you want to make this the traditional way, cream the butter and sugar, add the vanilla and then the eggs, one at a time, followed by a spoonful of flour. fold in the rest of the flour and the cornflour, adding no baking powder, and when all's incorporated, add a little milk as you need.

pour and scrape the batter into your tins and bake for about 25 minutes, until the cakes are beginning to come away at the edges, are springy to the touch, and a skewer comes out clean. leave the cakes in their tins on a wire rack for ten minutes, then turn out to cool completely.

okay, so that's your sponge recipe. to assemble my cake, i whipped about 150ml cream until it was at a soft-fold stage rather than a stiff peak stage. i spread one half of the cake with my rose petal jelly, scattered over about 200g raspberries, then spread the cream gently over the top, before adding the other layer of the cake. and i got something that looked a little like this:


exactly how i'd envisaged it. i had to take a load down to work cos i knew there was no way we could finish it all at casa mitchell, despite the best will in the world, seeing as this cake was absolutely massive. it was really, really good, and i think the only thing i would change is to maybe add another layer of rose petal jelly, but that might be due to my floral fanaticism more than anything else. i am already keeping my eyes peeled for more japanese roses, because i've got about a million more plans to bake with this lovely stuff, and only a jar and a half left.

i'm headed down to london this weekend, but before i go i will hopefully have time to tell you about my victory (that's right, you heard me) at iron cupcake on monday, so do stay tuned for more kitchen tinkering that resulted in seriously good cake.

o rose, thou art sick

i walk past the house i basically grew up in on my way to work almost every day. it's a really odd sensation, waving to old neighbours and stopping for a chat, seeing that the place still has the hideous red blinds my mum bought in the spare room window, wondering what the people who are like live there now. i could kid myself that it's a shortcut, and that's why i walk that way every day, but it only realistically shaves 2 minutes off my journey, and i only ever walk that way on my way to, not from, work. the real reason i walk that way is because it is situated on a contemporary housing estate between the village i now live in, and the village i work in. the people who built the housing estate have given it every faux-suburbia detail you'd expect; fake gables, fake pillars, banks of ornamental plants seperating the path and the road. it's no different from any other in the country; especially down to the fact that these banks of ornamental plants are all non-native to the uk. they're all cheap, hardy, perennial, invasive foreign plants, which stirs something in me, makes me feel uneasy and quite angry in fact. a lot of uk wildflowers and plants are endangered, and the people who build estates like this are building them on land where these plants would previously have grown. i am not saying they shouldn't be building homes, but the idea of planting cheap imported plants to take up space and provide something green and suburban rapidly seems irresponsible when growing native plants is possible, and would in fact be a commendable act of conservation by these companies.

still, as usual i have been making the best of an unsurprisingly bad lot. while spring was spent tossing handfuls of native wildflower seeds in to these banks (i am starting to see some growth, which pleases me), the beginning of summer has seen me anxiously watching one of the invaders with interest.

the plant in question is the japanese rose. the japanese rose differs from wild english roses, in that its flowers and hips ripen at the same time, and its petals are a far more lurid pink (as you can probably guess, it was bred as an ornamental). you rarely see wild english roses these days, so if you're looking to make rose flavoured things you're either gonna have to turn to your back garden, or arm yourself with a pair of scissors and go to battle with the invaders colonizing suburbia. which is exactly what i did.

as with other invasive wildlife, such as the signal crayfish, if you remove reproductive opportunities from the japanese rose, you're actually helping out our native wildlife, so really, there isn't any reason not to pick (and to be honest, there are so many hips on a japanese rose that the likelihood of you preventing it self-seeding more plants is so slim as to be laughable). it's basically your patriotic duty to buy jam sugar and declare war.

these are the petals and hips i got on one half hour outing (and that probably included the walk there and the walk back):


i also got some surprise wild lavender, which i was, i assure you, a lot more responsible in picking (you should only ever pick what you'll actually use and never completely strip a plant; nature doesn't belong to any one person, or in fact, just to people at all), which i found growing in an alleyway on my walk. as you can see, that's quite a ludicrous haul, the tubs shown holding at least 400-500ml each. with my river cottage hedgerow handbook as my guide, i rinsed my haul and got to work on preserving my spoils.

we'll start with the hips, with which i made:

rosehip syrup

basically this is the easiest thing ever. for every 150 grams of hips you have, use 250mls of water. bring it all to the boil in a huge pan, and let simmer for about 15 minutes, mashing gently with a potato masher every so often. strain it through a musin lined sieve, chuck away the pulp, rinse out the muslin, and re-strain into the pan. add 150g granulated sugar, stir over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to a boil, and take off the heat. pour it into hot, sterilized jars.

here's mine:


and now onto the petals. with most of mine i made rose petal jelly (recipe also taken from the river cottage hedgerow handbook):

rose petal jelly

makes two small jars

250ml water
250ml japanese rose petals (gently pressed down)
350g jam sugar (ie. sugar with added pectin)
juice of 1/2 a lemon

pour the water into a medium saucepan and bring to the boil. take off the heat and stir in the petals. put into a bowl, cover, and leave for an hour at least, or overnight if you have the time:

strain the liquid through a fine sieve back into your pan and place over a low heat. add the sugar and stir to dissolve, then add the lemon juice and bring to a scary, fast boil. keep this rolling boil going for 4 minutes, then take the pan off the heat.

allow the mixture a couple of minutes to calm down, then pour into hot, sterilized jars, filling them to the brim before screwing on the lid.

here are my jars:


let's all just take a moment to look at the beautiful colour of this. i was awestruck, like a little kid. this was so simple to make that i am already scouting for my next fix of petals; i definitely need as much of this jelly in my life as is humanly possible.

now, for my final petals, and my bonus lavender:

floral sugar

i can't remember where i got this recipe for floral/herbal sugars, but basically all you do is layer up the petals and sugar in airtight jars, and every couple of days, stir, until you have beautifully scented and flavoured sugar for use in baking and cooking. the reason this way is the best i have found is because it does not bruise the petals and therefore it is less likely that your sugar will ferment.

here's mine:

i used granulated sugar for the rose petals, and unrefined caster sugar for the lavender. mostly because it was what i had around, but also because i suspect the lavender sugar will be the one i reach for more in the main body of cakes and baking, and the rose will be more of a 'finishing sugar', for sprinkling on top of cakes and desserts.

so, not a bad haul for one afternoon of walking/picking/singlehandedly taking on irresponsible landscape gardening, eh? i've now got a shelf full of preserves i can use in my cooking, and i've done wild roses the country over a favour in the process. it's a wonder more people don't do this kind of thing; as it definitely does a body good.