This is the time of year when I enjoy the sight of dandelions. Usually I curse them when I have to get on my hands and knees and pull them out of my vegetable beds, but in early spring they bloom all at once and cover lawns and hillsides with happy yellow puffs and I can't help but admire them.



The other fantastic thing about dandelions is that they are a free source of food. My neighbor's lawn is covered with tall, poker chip sized flowers, so I took a basket after work and managed to fill it to the brim. There were so many flowers that even after taking over a hundred the yard still looked untouched.



It's weirdly hot for late April, and it's already uncomfortable in my house.* I sat on the porch and trimmed the petals out of my rinsed flowers. My cooking pot was soon filled with a tangle of yellow fluff. I measured it out later and I had a total of about 4 cups of petals.

I covered my petals with a quart of water, just like in this recipe, and set it to boil. I only let the liquid boil for a minute and then let it cool. My recipe recommended leaving it overnight to leech out more flavor, but I found the saffron colored liquid to be very strong tasting after sitting out for only an hour.



I strained the liquid and added an equal volume of sugar and squeezed in a meyer lemon. I placed the mixture on the stove and let it boil down until it had the consistency of a syrup, which took about an hour. The recipe advises against letting the liquid boil, but I was in a hurry to reduce it. In the end, my shortcut didn't seem to affect the taste. I let the liquid cool for a few minutes and then poured it out into a container and left it in the fridge to cool further.



While the syrup cooled I made sopaipillas according to this recipe, but leaving off the honey and cinnamon sugar. As my dough fried I took a few minutes to reflect on the stupidity of boiling and frying things in my tiny kitchen on such a hot day. However, I'm telling you that it is totally worth it for fried dough drizzled in sweetness. The syrup ended up looking and tasting a lot like honey, but with a distinct, pleasant herbal note. That's not bad for something I pulled out of the ground for free.

Labels: food, projects

posted by Alison 4/27/2009 10:41:00 PM : (0) comments : splink