A flower the color of history
Every day should surrender a small jewel, something new and intriguing for the body or the mind. Every day does, unless you have been sleeping. I woke today to page 122 of the hardcover edition of Silk Road Cooking, by Najmieh Batmanglij:
Saffron
Long treasured as a medicine, perfume, dye, and seasoning,saffron consists of the golden stigmas of the autumn-flowering purple crocus, Crocus Sativus. It takes the stigmas of 75,000 blossoms – an acre of flowers – to produce one pound of the spice. These must be picked from the crocus by hand, making saffron, currently selling for about $55 an ounce, the most expensive spice in the world…
Did you know it was a crocus? I didn’t.
… The rare spice’s reputation followed it as cultivation spread along the trade routes into Kashmir and farther east. Golden yellow became a royal color – and a sacred one. Shortly after the Buddha died in the fifth century BCE, his priests chose saffron dye to color their robes. Perhaps in token of its erotic associations [saffron was considered an aphrodisiac], saffron was also used to dye the veils of brides in ancient Tyre, as well as the breasts and arms of newly married Indian women.
All of these virtues aside, saffron remains a wonderful seasoning and coloring for food, especially grain…
Page 123 offers a picture of a young farmworker from Srinigar, India, with her basket of harvested blossoms, bathed in sweat and clearly neither benefiting from the regal aura of the spice, nor from its love-enhancing potential. Perhaps she smiles at the end of the day, when she can straighten up for a bit. Or perhaps her duties extend to preparing tea and dinner for the household, cleaning and preparing the bedrooms, pleasing her man, before she may attend to her own respite and pleasure? A flower gatherer deserves better.
Something else in the author’s notes: the stigmas from her crocuses should be ground with sugar and diluted with water for finest flavor.
Really! And I thought the red-silk threads in this little jar were just to be flung, unceremoniously, into a pot of boiling rice, to add a dash of flavor and tiny cyphers of color to an otherwise bland starch… little did I know that, through my ignorance, royalty and eroticism were not being properly served to my guests.
But here you have it, in black and white, straight from the Silk Road itself: Sicilian Eggplant with Saffron Soufflé: one quarter teaspoon ground saffron, dissolved in one tablespoon of water. Delhi Curried Potato and Egg Patties: one quarter teaspoon saffron, dissolved in a tablespoon of water.
Like so many other colors in the artist’s eye, saffron unlocks its beauties to the inquisitive.
And now, it is time to take my rest, so my eyes will be sharp for tomorrow’s prizes. I’ll let you know how the soufflé turns out.