saffron
Saffron is, for me, the most exotic of spices. These fine crimson filaments are the stigmas (not the stamens, as is often mistakenly stated) of an autumn flowering crocus, crocus sativus. There are only three stigmas in each flower and it takes 210,000 of them (70,000 flowers) to make half a kilo of saffron. So it is understandable that, by weight, saffron is more costly than gold.
Saffron crocuses with their three long red stigmas clearly visible (photo by Henna via Wikimedia Commons)
Crocus sativus is thought to be one of the earliest cultivated plants – because it is a sterile triploid (with three sets of chromosomes) meaning that its pollen is infertile, so it relies on human assistance to divide the bulb to propagate it. As well as being used in cooking, saffron has long been a popular dye, not least for Buddhist robes. It was valued too for its medicinal properties: Alexander the Great drank saffron tea and believed that soaking in a saffron bath would heal his battle wounds. The sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerarde writes that the ‘moderate use’ of saffron ‘is good for the head, and maketh the senses more quicke and lively, shaketh off heavy and drowsie sleepe, and maketh man merry’. He describes the three central stigmas as ‘of a fierie colour somwhat reddish’ and further observes the ‘flower does first rise out of the ground nakedly in September, and the … leaves shortly after the flower, never bearing flower & leaf at once’. Interestingly, the autumn saffron crocus is a completely different botanical family to the spring crocus. Gerarde adds ‘Common, or the best known Saffron groweth plentifully in Cambridgeshire, Saffron Walden and other places thereabouts, as corne in the fieldes’. It still grows like that in north-east Iran.
Harvesting saffron near Gondabad, Iran (photo by Mohammad Javad Mahdizadeh via Wikimedia Commons)
One of the most precious gifts I have ever received was a pouch of saffron. Aydin came all the way from Iran to study for a Master’s degree on the harpsichord with us in Cardiff. At the beginning of his second year, he returned from his home bearing saffron for me, a thankyou from one mother to another for looking after her son. Its quality was a revelation: it was the most beautiful saffron I have ever tasted with a wonderfully focused, rich and very slightly smoky flavour.
As the year progressed Aydin’s financial position seriously worsened due to the West’s sanctions against Iran. We wondered what we could do to help him, so I asked him what he thought about us helping us with some decorating and we’d pay him. Together we set about repainting the kitchen and dining room and as we worked Aydin described life in Iran. He recalled living in Tehran as a small child during the Iran-Iraq war with the windows all taped up in case they were blown in by a bomb. He talked of the strength of Iranian women. And he described the beauty of the never-ending fields of saffron in north-eastern Iran, and how the women would sit around a table together extracting the valuable saffron stigmas and laying them carefully on a plate in the centre, whilst the purple petals were thrown on the ground. Aydin recalled seeing the large piles of purple crocus petals lying by the side of the roads. It made me long to visit those magnificent fields …
Saffron stigmas plucked from the crocus flower heads (photo by Mohammad Javad Mahdizadeh via Wikimedia Commons)
Saffron can be grown anywhere in the world where the summer temperatures hit 40°C and in the winter fall to -30°C. These conditions are found in Spain, the country through which saffron was introduced to Western Europe via the Moors. Saffron features in a recipe for poached pears given to me by my Catalan friend Montse.
When I told Aydin I was writing a grain-free vegetarian cookbook he immediately asked his mother for her recipe for nan-e nokhodchi biscuits (see page 253 of my book). These are made with chickpea flour, for the Persian New Year, Nowruz, celebrated at the spring equinox. Aydin also told me about Persian bastani ice cream – a sumptuous marriage of saffron, rosewater and pistachio nuts (see page 223).
Saffron always makes me think of Aydin – and I dream that one day he might be able to show me the saffron fields of North-Eastern Iran.
