[Sca-cooks] Curious about a spice.
Lilinah
lilinah at earthlink.net
Sat Mar 15 08:48:10 PDT 2008
rattkitten at bellsouth.net wrote:
> Came across this in the Latin section of our Walmart and bought it
>just cause...
> They are round little balls and the label says Whole Saffron. What
>is it? Any help?
>
> Nichola
Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net> replied:
>If it is in the Latin section, I would bet a cookie that these are
>Safflowers, not True Saffron.
>
>Selene
Safflower is made of flower petals (i've used the stuff when
safflower was called for in a recipe) and sort of looks like giant
saffron.
If the mysterious round little balls are quite small and hard and
dark orange-red, they could well be achiote/annatto, which is used to
color foods yellow, especially in parts of Latin America, and
especially in the Caribbean parts. It's now also grown in the
Philippines where it's called atsuwete or achuete. There's some
additional info here:
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Bixa_ore.html
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
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