[Sca-cooks] Fw: [MR] Red saffron source

[Pixel, Queen of Cats]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy wrote:

> ruadh wrote:
> >
> > well, cooks;  Dave gave me his permission to share 'his' message. Please
> > respond directly to him. if anyone tries, let us know the results. I
> > personally don't have a 'need' to use saffron in my cooking or dyeing.
> > Merry Rose ["MR"] is the kingdom newsletter for Atlantia. Ru
>
>
> Hey there...
>
> Please forward as needed. I've cc'd David W.
>
> My own experience is that I am still trying to think of ways to use the
> kilo of safflower stamens that a kind, well-meaning friend picked up for
> me in Turkey. I haven't been able to bring myself to tell my friend he
> got a deal that was too good to be true, so much of my saffron-related
> cookery involves me spiking a large pinch of the safflower with a
> smaller pinch of real saffron (woo hoo, I'm an adulterer!).
>
> Anyway, just on the off-chance that suspiciously inexpensive saffron is
> in fact safflower (which does indeed grow in Turkey, also: I know in
> Lebanon it is called osfor; dunno what it might be called in Turkey),
> one should be careful of this because, while safflower can be used for
> coloring rice, etc., it is the pollen that does most of the work, and
> seems to be largely exclusive to real saffron. Rice (or whatever)
> colored with safflower (which, BTW, is sometimes called Mexican saffron
> or azafran, which is confusing since actual saffron is also called
> azafran in Mexico) tends to produce a very pale yellow to white rice
> with reddish threads in it. It is like red sandalwood; you need a fair
> amount very finely ground to get an effect.
>
> Hope this helps. And, of course, I may be wrong and this may be real
> saffron. I just doubt it a little.
>
> Adamantius, who buys a one-ounce tin in the Indian grocery for about 22
> bucks once a year or so


You could try dyeing with it. ;-)

Seriously, though, safflower contains two pigments, a yellow and a
red. You can dye silk with both of them, but the yellow will not dye
cellulose fibers. According to Kass McGann, who has a lovely article on
the process on her web site, this was a prized color in Heian Japan:
http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/japanese/safflower.html

Hot pink is apparently period.

Which leads one to wonder if it could be used successfully as a food
coloring without huge amounts of processing.

Margaret FitzWilliam