Cooking with rose syrup: Best online recipe sites

Do you want to learn how to cook with roses? How about rose pesto? One expert on cooking with roses was Sally T. Levine. Her favorite was rose water cookies made with almond meal. If you're looking for a winter recipe using rose water see, Almond pancakes with rosewater syrup recipe. Make your own rose water syrup. See, Rose Water Syrup Recipe - Food.com - 60640.

Her mouth-watering cookie raw foods recipe was to put 1/4 cup of rose water extract into 1 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil and mix in 1 cup of ground almonds turned into almond meal using a Vita Mix or similar type of powerful blender--using the dry grinder, not the wet emulsifier.

Then Sally tossed into the mixture a handful of roughly chopped walnuts--about two tablespoons of walnuts. She turned the almonds and some added dried fruits, such as dehydrated nectarine pieces into little balls or cookies consisting of ground nuts, dried fruits, sesame seeds, chia seeds, and pasted together with a small amount of rose petal water. You also can buy rose water in a bottle from most ethnic Greek and Middle Eastern grocery stores or buy online. See the site, Rose water, Cortas, 10 fl oz.

You also can make rose syrup. See, Rose Water Syrup Recipe at Epicurious.com. Also see, White Peaches In Rose-Water Syrup. The rose water syrup helps to take away some of the tart, sour taste of the peaches.

Also check out my other article on making exotic ice creams with rose petal extract, How to make exotic, fragrant ice creams and spiced frozen desserts. See my article on Silk Road cooking using rose petal extract and other exotic-scented items in cooking. For a lot more recipes, see the website of the Rose Diva and her book, The Rose Cookbook. It contains around 300 recipes for roses. See, The Rose Cookbook - A Treasury of Rose Recipies from Around the World.

From Sacramento, you might be interested in a raw cookie recipe from Sally T. Levine's made from almonds, pistachio nuts, raisins, sesame seeds, walnuts, and rose petal extract. In Sally's recipe, the almond meal is mixed with a table spoon or two of crunchy almond butter. A tablespoon of honey or any preferred sweetener can be used. Or just sweeten the cookie balls with raisins or chopped dried fruit such as black figs. Raisins and shelled pistachio nuts are tossed into the mixture, about a handful of each.

You also could use a coffee grinder to grind the shelled nuts. She added 2 tablespoons of tahini (sesame seed paste), 2 tablespoons of crunchy almond butter, 1/4 cup of raisins or chopped black dried figs, 1/4 cup of shelled pistachio nuts, 2 tablespoons of whole sesame seeds (hulled), 1/4 cup of pomegranate juice, 1 tablespoon of carob powder or dark chocolate cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon of wheat germ, 1 tablespoon of whey powder, and 1 tablespoon of psyllium husk.

The mixture is then rolled into balls. Wet your hands with a bit more of the rose water, and roll the mixture into balls. Put in a covered bowl or pan in your refrigerator for two hours to chill. Then eat as you would cookies. You can substitute orange blossom water for rose petal extract if you'd prefer the scent of orange to red roses. The idea is to come out with raw cookies made from nut pastes that smell and taste like scented rose petals.

These are pasty, wet, raw cookie balls made mostly of almond butter, sesame tahini, pistachio nuts, and almond meal. But if you want to dehydrate them, you can do so. Sally served the balls with dollups of unsweetened yogurt. What else can you make with edible roses? Check out the Cooking with roses site for some delightful recipes ranging from rose petal jam to rose mayonnaise.

Here are some recipes online that actually use roses, rose petals, or rosewater. If you purchase roses commercially, wash them very well to get rid of pesticide residue. Use organic roses if you can find them.

If you buy rose petal extract (rose petal water) in commercial bottles, you may be able to find them at Sacramento's Middle Eastern grocery stores, including the Mediterranean Market at 1547 Fulton Avenue, Sacramento, CA. The store has several types from which to choose. See the website, Mediterranean Market.

Recipes Using Rose Petals from the Cooking with Roses site (Kattitudes).