Long ago, Laura Esquivel taught me to eat roses. Join us as we explore how to catch the scent of roses, learn some tips for preparing the petals, and visit with an English forager who collects roses by the basketful from her garden on the border of England and Wales.
Photography by Marie Viljoen, unless otherwise noted.
Rosa ‘Abraham Darby’ on our terrace in Brooklyn.
I have always had a weakness for voluptuous English roses, and, one summer, when ‘Abraham Darby’, a David Austin hybrid, bloomed prolifically on our terrace despite a fatal viral infection, I cut all the blooms and stuffed them into vases before removing the doomed shrub.
A glass pickle pebble weighs down the rose petals in a jar. As they faded, their scent persisted, and it seemed a travesty to waste their final bounty. A concentrated cordial followed (sugar + water + rose petals), although I noticed that it never fizzed, a sign that fermentation is active.
Beach roses on the Maine coast.
Beach roses waiting to be plucked.
Rosa rugosa (center) steeping in syrup. For sweet rose infusions I mix a syrup of equal weights sugar and water (I use organic sugar, so the liquid turns light brown), enough to fill whatever size jar I am using.
A summer mocktail—1 oz rose infused rose syrup, 1 oz lemon juice, shaken with ice.
Strained, slightly oxidized beach rose petals.
Photograph by Liz Knight.
Liz Knight gathers roses from her own garden and the lanes around her house. In her book Forage: Wild Plants to Gather, Cook, and Eat (Lawrence King Publishing, 202o), her recipes for Rose Petal Rice Pudding and Rose Petals Macerated in Sugar make the most of the flowers’ ethereal scent.
Photograph by Liz Knight.
Liz’s garden is stuffed with roses (“in June you have to practically hack your way through…”), and for a while she supplied those specialty stores, selling bespoke batches of rose el hanout (a pun we can approve), and sweet rose dukkah to the storied Fortnum and Mason.
“I always loved the fact that my flowers made their way onto strangers tables,” she says.
Liz’s Rose-Gathering Tips:
Petals of ‘Graham Thomas’ and ‘Bolero’ with palm sugar.
Photograph by Liz Knight.
Gulkand Recipe
Riffed from Liz Knight’s recipe for Rose Petals Macerated in Sugar (which layers petals with sugar), my version of gulkand—a cooling tonic in Ayurveda—relies on palm sugar candy and the fragrant blooms I glean from our terrace shrubs.
Add the lid and leave in the sun (ideally) for two weeks (it will turn syrupy and spoonable within a few days).