I’m planning to do some confectionery cooking and need a bit of rose water. I could buy some but, like the guy in the movie said, “…it turns out I’ve got a rose garden.”
The traditional recipe calls for heating some petals in water. Can anyone recommend particular varieties suitable for the purpose?
Unless you have some of the old Damasks with their heavy, characteristic perfume, many of the deep red, Damask scented HTs can work suitably. Crimson Glory, Chrysler Imperial, etc. can provide the right oils to create what you are looking for. The white petal bases can be bitter so you might benefit from clipping them off. A fellow volunteer in the Herb Garden at The Huntington used to make Mlle Cecile Brunner jelly using the rose water from her blooms. It tasted like a mild currant with the scent of the rose after taste and was amazing on fresh oatmeal-hazelnut toast with fresh coffee. I’d devour it when she’d bring me a jar. We have a large Middle Eastern population locally and many of the Mediterranean markets and bakeries use rose water in everything. I loved Sherry’s jelly, but rose water in pastries is a bit “air freshener” for my taste buds.
I have used rosewater in my Baklava and it is quite frankly enough work to cook the pastries and confectioneries alone, so give yourself a break and buy the stuff at a Middle Eastern specialty market-they have the right type of roses in the correct amounts. And it isn’t expensive. Baklava sounds really good right now, and if I had to go to the time and effort of producing ‘homemade’ rosewater I would never get around to making those types of goodies.