Lynn Strong

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  • Preorders and Pickles: Sweet and sour rose pickles

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    (Part of the recipe collection from Haroun and the Study of Mischief. But also, it seemed like a pink and rose-petaled recipe was quite suited to start off February! And I’ve just opened preorders for Chai and Charmcraft this week; I’ll keep adding links to the page as more distributors come online. I seem to have an accidental Thing about preorders and pickles, remembering the pre-release post for Haroun too…)

    The distinction I make between quick pickles and slow pickles is whether you plan to sterilize things for long term use or whether you’ll eat them within a few days. You’ll also find that distinction noted in the medieval cookbooks – some of them note that they’re meant to be eaten after two or three days, and others say they’ll be good for a year (assuming appropriate cleanliness and saltiness in the making, of course).

    For all that turnips have an unfortunate reputation for being bland and unpleasant, that made them a marvelous candidate for medieval pickling. In the table of contents of Nawal Nasrallah’s translation of Kanz al-Fawaid / Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table, there’s over twenty recipes for pickling turnips alone. The Sultan’s Feast by Ibn Mubarak Shah, translated by Daniel Newman, offers many pickling recipes as well. (It’s a condensed version of Kanz al-Fawaid, but it’s available in an ebook, which means it’s more accessible to me; I’ve worked back and forth between the two.)

    Among just the turnip pickles alone, you get salted brines, vinegared brines with and without sugar, saffron for dyeing the pickles yellow, and yeasted brines. Like an upscale market’s olive bar, the cooks also took already-cured olives and applied new flavors to them: walnuts, hazelnuts, coriander seeds, salt preserved lemons, and olive oil, smoked olives, and so forth.

    Some of the recipes include instructions for scenting or smoking the jar they’re to be preserved in. And rose petal pickles are particularly fragrant.

    Sweet and Sour Rose Petals with a Low Spoons variant

    Recipe 609 in Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove either has three sub-variants under the same number, or this one might have been meant to be 611 but it just wasn’t numbered? I can’t tell for certain because of the clipping in the Google Scholar preview. I’m clearly going to have to try this with my damask roses this summer. And I was delighted that this historic recipe also contained a Low Spoons variation built into it!

    “Another recipe [for sweet and sour rose petals]:

    Take [the petals of] white roses of Nusaybin, put them in honey, and leave them in the sun until they wilt. Fold wine vinegar and a bit of mint into them, and put them [in a jar], and use [as needed].

    Those who do not have fresh roses can take ready-made rose-petal honey jam and add vinegar to it. If it turns out to be too sour, sweeten it [with sugar or honey]. This will be as fine as the first one mentioned. It will look nice, and it is quite easy to make.” (Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove / Kanz translation, somewhere between recipe 609 and 611)

    My modern note: You can find gulkand or Yunnan rose petal honey jam online if you’d like.

  • Cheeses: Qanbaris, dahi, and paneer

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    (Part of the recipe collection from Haroun and the Study of Mischief.)

    There are two versions of qanbaris in The Sultan’s Feast, one of which is made like paneer with acid and the other of which is made like dahi with hung yogurt. Both of these varieties of cheese are among the easiest cheeses to make at home, because unlike halum/halloumi and cheddar and others, you don’t need rennet and you don’t need aging. (In fact, paneer is so easy to make at home that I have accidentally made Earl Grey paneer in a teacup before.)

    Historic qanbaris with Boiling Acid, Ranveer-style: Mad Alchemist’s Cheese

    This historic recipe feels like one of Ranveer’s alchemy experiments: they’re taking the “throw a stick of dynamite in, shut the blast door, and run away” approach to making absolutely sure there’s enough acid to curdle the milk. Instead of boiling milk and adding a couple tablespoons of vinegar, this one boils a whole pot of vinegar and adds the milk. I love the original scribe’s commentary on people who think cheese is an essential food group too:

    “Take new pots, pour in tart vinegar, and place over a fire until it starts boiling. [When it does,] remove from the fire and pour in milk. Set [the pots] aside and do not touch them. In the morning open them up, and you will find that [the milk] has coagulated into qanbarīs. Milk has harmful properties, but these are outweighed by its benefits; it is tasty and there are people who do not enjoy their food unless there is cheese on the table.” (The Sultan’s Feast recipe 182)

    Paneer with So Much Less Boiling Acid

    I suspect part of the reason for the “boil all the vinegar, throw milk in, clamp the lid on, run away, and see what’s happened by the next day” tactic comes from the unpredictability of homebrewed vinegar acidity levels. Nowadays you can buy industrialized vinegar standardized to particular strengths; 5% is the minimum for preservational pickling, and Essig-Essenz comes in at 25% in the bottle (along with a hazard warning not to drink it undiluted). I’ve seen paneer made with both vinegar and lemon juice, and the lemon juice recipes also tend to have “keep some spare juice on hand” notes as well.

    One of the unique features of cheese made with this acid method is that, like halloumi, it won’t melt. If you drain it well and shape it solidly, you can grill paneer just like kebabs. It’s more likely to crumble than to melt, so cubes in curry are a classic for a reason.

    • 2 quarts or thereabouts animal milk (cow, goat, whatever)
    • Up to 1/2 cup vinegar and/or lemon juice
    • A sieve or colander
    • Cheesecloth, muslin, or a flour-sack kitchen towel (smooth and densely woven) – I honestly prefer muslin or the flour-sack towel here because the “cheesecloth” I have is too loosely woven and shaggy

    Line your sieve or colander with your cheese-making cloth (and if it’s actual cheesecloth you probably want a couple layers).

    Pre-measure your acid into a pourable container.

    Bring the milk up to a boil, stirring constantly to keep it from scorching or scorching.

    Pour a couple tablespoons of acid into the hot milk. If you don’t see it begin to separate out into clumpy curds and pale whey, add some more acid.

    When your curds and whey have separated in your pot, take the pot off the heat and carefully pour it through your cloth-lined sieve or colander.

    Gather up the ends of the cloth and twist carefully to wring more of the liquid out of the cheese and encourage it to form a ball.

    Some people will tie a knot in their cloth and hang it over their faucet to drip. My faucet is too curvy for that, so I put the colander into a large bowl and let it continue to drip.

    If you’d like for it to be really solid, you can put a plate with a can on top of it in the colander and bowl arrangement to press additional liquid out. You can also put the weighted plate and colander and bowl arrangement into the refrigerator to continue draining and firming up overnight.

    Accidental Earl Grey Paneer

    Believe it or not, some people have done this on purpose, and Earl Grey cheese is surprisingly expensive.

    • 2 cups milk
    • 1-2 double bergamot Earl Grey tea bags or 2 tsp loose leaves in a tea ball
    • 2 oz lavender syrup that happens to be preserved with citric acid (though you could produce the same effect with lemon juice)
    • Colander and cloth apparatus from above

    Simmer the tea directly in the milk until it’s tan and fragrant.

    Assuming you’re more prepared for this outcome than I was, remove the tea containment system from the simmering milk before adding the acid.

    Add the lavender syrup and/or lemon juice.

    Stir until you have curds.

    Pour through cloth and colander.

    Wring and squeeze gently, unwrap your tea flavored cheese, and nibble.

    Historic qanbaris with hung yogurt

    I suspect the hung yogurt qanbaris is the variety that Treasure Trove recipe 529 recommends flavoring with the oil-based za’atar-meets-pesto paste, rather than the “throw milk into the boiling acid and run away” qanbaris. It seems easier to get flavorings into a softer cheese, as opposed to marinading and brining harder / crumblier cheeses. But this recipe is basically identical to the modern methods of making yogurt and yogurt cheese, aside from the historical measurements:

    “Take milk and boil it until it starts bubbling. Then take a new pot and leave it to cool for an hour. Then take laban yāghurt – for each ten raṭls of milk, take half a raṭl of laban yāghurt, and stir with a ladle. Cover the pot and leave in a warm place. Put a little bit of straw underneath and leave overnight, and it will become like a disc. Put [the yoghurt] in a bag, and strain, after which it will become qanbarīs. Remove it from the bag, add salt, and serve when you need to. Afterwards transfer to a clean container [for storage].” (The Sultan’s Feast recipe 189)

    What’s a ratl, you say? That’s an excellent question and the answer can range anywhere from eight ounces to eight pounds depending on what you’re measuring and what city you’re in when you do it. For these purposes, just pick a volume that suits your heating container – maybe a half-cup or a cup, if you’re planning to use a slow cooker for your low and steady heat source.

    Dahi and other hung yogurt cheese variations

    Dassana’s Veg Recipes has a dahi recipe that’s strikingly similar to the historic version above. It does require animal milk, though, and if you have food sensitivities, you might need to use a different yogurt variety.

    All the cheese-making magic here is mechanical, not fermentational, and you could do something similar with cashew or coconut or other non-dairy yogurts.

    Still got that colander and cloth arrangement from paneer above? That’s it, really.

    • Some quantity of yogurt (animal or plant) that you’d like to make thicker
    • Cheesecloth, muslin, or flour-sack towel
    • Sieve or strainer
    • Optional: Flavorings of your choice

    If you’d like to flavor the yogurt before condensing it into cheese, stir it in and leave it in the refrigerator overnight before continuing.

    (Extra history points: Stir in some of the fresh thyme and oil-based za’atar blend. Low spoons modifier: Use dried za’atar or pop open a small jar of pesto and add a couple spoonfuls.)

    Set up your cloth and sieve or strainer arrangement.

    Soft cheese: Let it hang out in your colander (and/or hang the cloth from your sink faucet if your faucet is cooperatively shaped).

    Medium firm cheese: Tie up your curd, put the plate and/or rock on it, and put it in the refrigerator overnight to see how much more you could press out of it. (Okay don’t just put a rock on it, that would sink in, the rock is an optional addition to the plate!)

  • Cheeses: Haloum and Halloumi

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    (from the recipe collection in Haroun and the Study of Mischief)

    The spice mixes in this collection also make delicious additions to cheese. You could stir atraf al-tib into a drained Greek yogurt or sprinkle za’atar into the makings of qanbaris or dahi. Mozzarella balls or paneer or halloumi chunks rolled in za’atar and served with flatbread and olives are also delicious and easy.

    If you want non-dairy cheese, Sam Turnbull has a highly-rated 15-minute soft cashew cheese recipe at It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken, and one of her recommended spice blends is very like za’atar. With a bit of honey and atraf al-tib, this could make a fascinating cousin to honey cinnamon cashew spreads too.

    If you want a firmer vegan cheese or are sensitive to cashews, Ela from Ela Vegan has a highly-rated sliceable nut-free vegan cheese recipe with a suggested spice blend that you could either add to or substitute za’atar for.

    Halum and Halloumi

    While Cyprus has laid legal claim to what’s modernly known as halloumi cheese, which is firm and grillable, the word halum / haloum was also used for cheese in medieval Egypt. Both Treasure Trove and The Sultan’s Feast give a recipe for flavoring halum with thyme and citrus, and since the recipe describes layering the cheese with citrus leaves and thyme, I imagine it must have been firm enough to handle as objects.

    If you’d like to make your own halloumi to start with, Matthew Evans gives a recipe involving rennet (also known as junket) at SBS Food. If you’re vegetarian, check the source of your rennet. But the historic recipe below assumes you’ve already got some cheese to flavor, so I’m going to start there.

    Historic halum flavoring

    “Boil milk with salt and Syrian thyme until one third of it has evaporated. Remove from the fire, and let it cool. In a silk cloth add a little bit of ground soapwort with cheese in the jar, together with a bit of (sour) orange, kabbād citrus, citron, lemon, and fresh thyme. Put one layer of cheese, one layer of fresh (orange) leaves and thyme until the jar is filled up. Then, add the boiled milk until it fills up the jar, and seal [the top] with a bit of good quality olive oil, and store. Transfer to a container when needed.” (Newman, The Sultan’s Feast recipe 186)

    I’m supposing that low-bacteria milk of the general thickness of cottage cheese liquid is probably what they were aiming for with the milk cooking, with some extra flavors added along the way.

    My easier modern version of flavored halum

    If you have the ambition and the organically grown citrus tree access to try layering cheese with citrus leaves, I’ll cheer you on. I don’t have either of those, though.

    (Quantities? Honestly, whatever suits your ambition and a reasonable sized container.)

    • Firm but not dry cheese (halloumi, paneer, mozzarella, drained cottage cheese: yes; parmesan, romano, cream cheese: probably not; hung yogurt cheese: maybe)
    • Some zestable citrus fruit, preferably organic: lemon, citron, lime
      • (You probably don’t want to use the citrus juice itself, or the milk you’re covering it with may become additional cheese)
    • Fresh thyme and/or oregano (if you want to use za’atar here I’ll endorse it, just be careful with how much sumac is involved, because malic acid also makes milk into cheese)
    • Pinch of salt
    • Pasteurized milk (or the liquid from your drained cottage cheese) to suit the size of your jar

    If you want to simmer the milk to condense it by a third and flavor it with herbs, go for it. If not, pasteurized milk is helpful for crowding out air pockets in the container.

    If your cheese is one large object, cut it into some smaller objects so the flavoring can distribute more.

    Mix your citrus zest and your herbs with your cheese chunks in a bowl.

    Pack them into a jar, cover with milk (or your reserved cottage cheese liquid), and refrigerate overnight.

    Eat within a few days.

    Vegan version:

    Use the vegan cheese of your choice and cover with almond or coconut milk or olive oil.

    Lowest spoons version:

    Stir whatever non-acidic flavorings you like into a container of cottage cheese. Refrigerate overnight. Nom the next day.

  • Spice blends: Za’atar

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    (Part of the recipe collection from Haroun and the Study of Mischief)

    Za’atar can mean Syrian thyme / Origanum syriacum by itself, but it’s also meant thyme-based spice blends from the Middle Ages until today.

    In Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove recipes 529-33, the za’atar blend she describes is used for flavoring cheese and involves moldy bread in the mixture. My modern soul quails at the notion of experimenting with homegrown bread molds, so I’m not going to recommend that particular method. But thyme and mint are stirred into soft qanbaris cheese in recipe 529, and used in the making of a milk-based condiment in 530. (I can’t see the exact details because of the Google Scholar cut-offs. At this point, imagine here my standard rant about having a library-available print copy less than a mile from my house that I can’t read, and let’s move on.)

    Daniel Newman notes that The Sultan’s Feast 190 is comparable to Treasure Trove 533, and his version reads:

    “190. Recipe to make thyme. (Take thyme) [and] clean its leaves. Wash and rub with salt and squeeze [the juice out. Then add] good quality olive oil on top; for each ten raṭls [of thyme], take one raṭl of olive oil. Place in an oiled wide-mouthed clay jar and seal. Add ground salt and if you want to season it, [add] pounded peeled garlic, a little bit of salt and good-quality oil until it becomes like ointment. Add pounded walnuts and eat; it is extremely tasty.”

    The English rendition of “to make thyme” sounds as though the word za’atar is already beginning to be used to mean a seasoning beyond the plant itself, though this particular recipe reads more like a thyme-based pesto (with oil, garlic, and walnuts) than the modern definition of za’atar.

    The modern definition of za’atar as a spice blend involves some combination of dried thyme, dried sumac, sesame seeds, and occasionally other flavor notes as desired. Penzey’s sells a sumac-rich blend that is absurdly tasty when sprinkled on hummus or pizza.

    Historic za’atar, oil-based:

    • 1 – 2 cups fresh thyme leaves, washed, dried, and removed from the stems
    • 1/3 cup chopped walnuts (or another nut or seed if you’re allergic)
    • 2-4 cloves fresh smashed garlic (but if you want more I’m not going to tell you no)
    • Up to 1/2 cup olive oil, cold pressed if available, separated
    • Pinch of salt

    If you want the historic experience, mash up the thyme, garlic, and salt with a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a mortar and pestle. (The rest of the oil is for covering the surface in the jar(s).)

    If you have a food processor, use it without shame.

    Once you’ve made your thyme puree, put it in a jar and cover the surface with olive oil before closing. Use within a few days, if you can resist that long.

    Modern za’atar, dry spices:

    (These dry spices are sometimes mixed in with olive oil as in the manakish recipe below, but they aren’t stored that way.)

    • 2 Tbsp dried thyme
    • 2 Tbsp sesame seeds
    • 1-2 Tbsp sumac depending on how tart you like it
    • Optional: Additional flavor notes like oregano or marjoram
    • Optional: a sprinkle of salt
    • Lightly toast the ingredients in a dry pan until fragrant. Let cool and put in a jar with a tight fitting lid.

    You can sprinkle it on things as it is or blend with some olive oil for a tasty dip or spread.

    Little dipping bowls (like for soy sauce with sushi) are handy for dipping bread into za’atar-mixed olive oil. (They’re also handy for portion control, because I will devour za’atar-and-olive-oil-dipped bread with far too much enthusiasm.)

    Manakish

    • Flatbread, naan, or pita
    • Either start with historic za’atar with oil blended in, or mix a couple tablespoons of olive oil with enough dry za’atar to make a paste
    • Optional: Feta or mozzarella or cheese of your choice

    Spread your bread with a thick layer of oil and za’atar. Optionally top with cheese. Toast or grill. Nom.

    • If you’re feeling super ambitious you can start from the dough onwards. I haven’t had that many spoons in the drawer since 2019 myself, though.
    • Low spoons modifier: Order something like breadsticks or a cheese pizza. Spread or sprinkle your preferred za’atar liberally over the top. Nom.
    • Low dairy modifier: Za’atar is also delicious on pita and hummus. Honestly za’atar is delicious on almost anything savory. I’ve put it on onigiri when I was out of furikake.

  • Spice blends: Atraf al-tib

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    (Part of the recipe collection in Haroun and the Study of Mischief)

    The dividing line between food, perfume, and incense was much blurrier in the medieval Middle East than it is in many places today; you can find recipes for breath mints that can also be burned as incense, or for spice blends that also appear in hand washing powders.

    Atraf al-tib takes a similar role to garam masala in that everyone has their own blend and it was commonly sold by vendors. In Charles Perry’s Scents and Flavors, he notes, “The name aṭrāf al-ṭib, ‘sides of scent,’ referred to the paper packets in which the spices were sold in markets. A maximum recipe is spelled out in Chapter 4 but not all the spices listed there were obligatory; the aṭrāf al-ṭib in §2.14 are merely ginger, cardamom, and a bit of clove.” That’s quite similar to European poudre douce, a sweet spice blend which is also one of the precursors of pumpkin spice.

    The recipe he gives in chapter 4 lists ingredients but not proportions: “Since ‘mixed spices’ are repeatedly mentioned in this book, a detailed description is in order. They comprise a mixture of spikenard, betel nut, bay leaf, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, clove, rose hips, ash tree fruits, long pepper, ginger, and black pepper, all pounded separately.” (Scents and Flavors recipe 4.4)

    In the introduction to The Sultan’s Feast, Daniel Newman writes that aṭrāf al-ṭīb “is used in about ten per cent of dishes, often alongside mint, rue or saffron. It is not usually called for in meat or fish dishes; instead, it is found in beverages, sweets, pickles and fragrances.” (It is, however, called for in one of the six and a quarter zirbaj variations in the book!)

    Based on the notes that there are some simple core ingredients and you can add more of them as your spice cabinet allows, this recipe is like Ashar’s rose-scented chai in that I’ll list some essentials and some optional stretch goals.

    The core notes:

    • 1 part ginger (powdered, not fresh or candied)
    • 1/2 to 1 part cardamom
    • 1/8 to 1/4 part clove

    Optional additions as you like:

    • 1 to 2 parts dried rose petals depending on how fragrant they are
    • 1/4 part nutmeg and/or mace
    • 1/4 to 1/2 part long pepper and/or black pepper
    • Bay leaves to taste (either left whole in the jar to remove from the cooking later or thoroughly powdered to blend in)

    A challenge, and possibly not advisable in the modern world:

    • Betel nut is not available in many locations because of concerns about potentially hazardous compounds.
    • Spikenard seems to be more available as an essential oil than as a powder, and the rest of these ingredients are dry.
    • For many years and many translations of cookbooks, some folks weren’t even sure what lisān ʿuṣfūr was. Perry and Newman’s “ash tree fruit” should be taken in the context that Old World and New World varieties of ash trees are different. Ash tree fruits (long and green) are not the same as mountain ash/rowan fruits (small, round, and red). And, of course, the emerald ash tree borer means that ash trees are very endangered.

    If you blend some of this up and store it in a well-sealing jar, you can try it out in some of the cheese and/or pickle recipes below. (Or the zirbaj!)

  • Sharbat for the Shahzada

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    (One of the recipes from Chai and Cat-tales)

    This is based on several historic recipes, most particularly sharbat e badam. Sharbat and sekanjabin and ‘aqsima / oxymel are very old beverages. Similar syrups were recorded by the 11th century’s Canon of Medicine by ibn Sina (known in much of Europe as Avicenna), with further details mentioned in the Persian Zakhira-i Khwarazmshahi, written for the shah of what is now Khorasan.

    You’ll also find ‘aqsima variations in the thirteenth century Syrian Kitab al-Wusla, translated as Scents and Flavors by Charles Perry, and the fifteenth century Egyptian Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa by ibn Mubarak Shah, translated as The Sultan’s Feast by Daniel L. Newman. I owe both of them a considerable debt of knowledge, both for their research and for their choice to make their books available in digital form.

    (At the time of the original book, I’d been on a failed multi-year quest to achieve legible-to-me ebook access to Nawal Nasrallah’s works. I have partly-legible access now, though I’m struggling with how the ebook edition has both mangled the diacriticals in the Roman alphabet and decided to write every bit of the Arabic backwards. The quest for truly legible access continues…)

    Most of the sharbat and ‘aqsima variants involve making sweet flavored syrup concentrate, sometimes with vinegar or acid, and later diluting to taste to serve. (Yes, in essence we’re talking about medieval Kool-aid or Ribena here.)

    This particular variant is a little fancier, as befits the table of the shahzada. In my world-building, food and drink in the God-Emperor’s court takes many of its taste and scent cues from the Ayubbid and Abbasid empires, occasionally ranging into Mughal tastes as well. The boundary between what you call perfume, what you call incense, and what you call spice for food was more flexible in the medieval Middle East than it is in most places today.

    So I’m putting together sandalwood and vetiver and other incense notes with the more familiar cardamom and almond, and of course a shahzada’s table would be graced with saffron.

    But as a disabled person who can’t stand over a stove for an hour anymore, and with friends who are vegan, I’ve also got an easy-mode variation and a no-animal-products variation.

    (Many variations use kewra or screwpine essence where I’m using sandalwood. If you have access to it and you like it, enjoy! I don’t have access outside Rooh Afza, which brings a lot of red food coloring that knocks out the saffron gold.)

    The formal version

    The formal version makes about 4-6 servings:

    Optional, to brew overnight and strain ahead:

    • A couple pieces of food grade (not blended or preservative treated) sandalwood, or about ½ tsp powder, or alternatively a few drops of kewra concentrate if you have it and like it
    • A good sized pinch of vetiver roots, or khus concentrate (ideally undyed)
    • 1 cup hot water in a container with a lid

    Cautionary note: If you have any questions at all about whether your sandalwood is food grade, don’t make tisane of it. Instead, just burn it in an incense burner while you’re sipping your wood-free sharbat e badam, because scent is its entire purpose here.

    So, once you have guaranteed food safe ingredients here:

    Make a cup of very hot water. Let the woody parts steep overnight in a covered container on your countertop. Pyrex or a mug is often good for this.

    In the morning, strain the pieces from your sandalwood and/or vetiver tisane. If you used sandalwood powder, a coffee filter or cheesecloth may help with grit removal.

    Keep the liquid.

    (Decide whether the solids will dry nicely for a second brewing or if they’ve given their all. You could also set them out in a cup to scent your room.)

    Possibly also overnight, almond milk:

    • If you have storebought almond milk, you can use that. Skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you don’t have almond milk, choose whether you’re going to use almond extract or make almond milk. If you’re going to use extract, skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you want to make your own almond milk: Soak about ¾ cup almonds in water overnight. (This can be scaled up if desired.) Blanched peeled almonds will be faster; if you start with regular almonds you’ll want to rub the skins off in the morning. In the morning, after draining and/or peeling the soaked almonds, blend them in a blender, adding somewhere between ¼ and 1 cup of water, to make a smooth paste. (You can make a larger batch if you want to make the finished sharbat entirely vegan.) Pour the almond milk through cheesecloth or a flour sack towel and squeeze the almonds to separate the milk from the grit. (If you like oatmeal or cereal, you can scatter the leftover almond paste into that.)

    Making the sharbat:

    • Either 1 cup of your prepared woody tisane, OR 1 cup of liquid and a nearby incense burner
    • 1/2 to 1 cup of your almond milk (or another liquid with a drop or two of almond extract)
    • 6 green cardamom pods, cracked open and black seeds extracted, OR about ¾ tsp cardamom powder
    • A pinch of saffron threads
    • About ½ cup jaggery, brown sugar, or white sugar, with about 1 tsp reserved for grinding the saffron

    In a pot, add most of your jaggery or sugar to your tisane or water and bring it up to a simmer. Save 1 tsp for grinding.

    Put the remaining 1 tsp of your jaggery or sugar in a mortar with most of the pinch of saffron, reserving a few threads to top the glasses with.

    Use the sugar to grind the saffron into fine bits and add it to the pot.

    If you have cardamom seeds extracted from the green cardamom pods, grind those well in the mortar and pestle. Then add them to the pot of sugar water too.

    Add as much of the almond milk as you like to the pot and simmer until it’s reduced by about half and is a bit thicker, likely 15-20 minutes. Keep stirring to prevent scorching.

    Remove from heat and cool.

    For each glass:

    • 2-3 Tbsp of your chilled sharbat e badam concentrate, or to taste
    • 1 cup cold milk of your choice (cow, almond, coconut)
    • A couple of saffron threads on top
    • (Optional) Light an incense burner with some sandalwood if you have it

    And, as promised, there are simpler versions.

    Simpler Sharbat e Badam (vegan friendly)

    For 4-6 servings:

    • 4-6 cups almond milk OR cow milk/coconut milk with a few drops almond extract added
    • ¾ tsp cardamom powder (or ground from pods if you have ambitions)
    • About ½ cup simple syrup, to taste (can be store-bought or can be made by melting together equal parts sugar and water and stirring until clear)
    • Optional: kewra and/or khus concentrate, to taste
    • Optional but nice: pinch of saffron and 1 tsp sugar

    The night before, or whenever you can, grind your saffron with the sugar, add a few drops warm water, and stir until the sugar dissolves and the water turns golden.

    Add the saffron sugar water, the cardamom, and any flavoring extracts to your chosen milk.

    Sweeten to taste with the simple syrup.

    Refrigerate for a while.

    When ready to serve, stir and pour as is. (No dilution needed since we didn’t make the concentrate.)

    Add a couple threads of saffron to the glass if you have them.

    Light some sandalwood if you feel like it.

  • Zulabiyya for the Eldest Archivist

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    As part of my quest to make recipe post with history notes available for all the book recipes, here’s another from the Chai and Cat-tales collection.

    This one is everything from historical to modern. Zulabiyya is one of the recipes that has the “peanut butter and jelly” problem, in that everyone assumes everyone knows how to make it so they describe it as already understood. You get consistency directions in tenth-century cookbooks that assume you already know what “the texture of zulabiyya batter” is when it’s used as a reference point for some other recipe.

    Apparently the taste for sweet fried yeast-fluffy dough drenched in even more sweet stuff is pretty long-standing, too. Zulabiyya / zalabiya have direct connections with jalebi, zlabiya, mushabbak, and (probably) funnel cakes.

    In Daniel Newman’s translation of Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa, the recipe for Cairene qahiriyya is described as applying zulabiyya batter over a sun-dried almond pastry ring and then deep frying the whole thing. I have dreams of someday being functional enough to try that one out. In the meantime, though, simple is helpful when cooking while disabled.

    Zulabiyya generally come in three shapes depending on the region and the chef’s tradition. Some of them are lattice-style, some are little round balls, and some of them are pillowy beignet-shaped bites of deliciousness. (The featured image here looks like it contains both the beignet-type and the funnel-cake-type variations on zulabiyya, so I was happy to find Raju Alam’s photo.)

    Old school:

    If you’d like a look at the historic version, Daniel Newman shows a video of himself making yeast-leavened and saffron-dyed zulabiyya on the Durham University YouTube channel.

    Simpler version, pillow style:

    My mother made a fast no-rise variation that’s similar to the Egyptian beignet-like fluffy pillow style, when we were young and she was busy and premade yeast dough was a time-saver:

    She’d buy ready-made yeast biscuits in a tube, snip them into quarters, and deep-fry them while simmering up the hot sugar syrup to dunk them in.

    Simpler version, lattice/funnel cake style:

    If you’d like to make your own but don’t feel confident with yeast, a box of pancake mix (mixed to a suitable consistency with water; leave aside the eggs and oil) will get you a self-rising sweet dough that responds nicely to frying. You could add almond extract, rosewater, orange blossom water, or anything else that pleases you before you cook it.

    If you feel like saffron, grind it up with a teaspoon of sugar before stirring it into the batter; it will distribute more thoroughly that way.

    For the latticed version, you’ll want to make the batter a bit thinner than for the pillow version. If you have a coconut shell handy, it provides both measurement and drizzling. (Funnels are fine too, of course!)

    For the ball or pillow version, you’ll want it a bit thicker and something like a scoop or ladle to measure dollops into the oil with.

    Once they’ve fried golden brown, fetch them out with a slotted spoon and set on wire racks or paper towels to drain until you’re ready for the sugar syrup.

    Sugar syrup:

    You can use half and half sugar and water, or you can heat up honey until it’s thin enough to drizzle.

    (A splash of rosewater and a pinch of cardamom in the syrup makes it even more delicious in my book.)

  • Warm comfort: Golden milk and chai

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    This was the second roughest holiday season of my life, and my plans for 3 weeks mostly of writing and editing… the universe said Ha, and kept laughing. I’m… probably not okay. But I need to keep impersonating it, because there isn’t a good alternative. When you grow up undiagnosed autistic with complex trauma and then become a theater major on top of that, are some things you learn about the functional value of masks that keep you together somehow when the show absolutely has to go on.

    I also realized that I made fundamental mistakes trusting WordPress’s defaults 3 years ago. But the amount of time and work needed to correct them is time that won’t go into writing new books.

    So here’s my patch between what I didn’t know about WordPress three years ago and what I can hopefully sustain going forward: the new Recipes section, collected by book, which I hope to add to gradually, reusing content that’s already written in the books and cutting down on the volume of paper needed in paperback editions. (If only in focus photos were not my nemesis!)

    Chai and Cat-tales has the least-intimidating collection of gaps to fill, so I’m going to start there.

    And, really, I’m willing to bet a fair number of folks are in need of some warm and soothing comfort lately.

    Golden Milk and Golden Chai

    Haldi doodh, turmeric milk, is an ancient drink from India. I can’t give you anything resembling a date, though. Every reference I’ve found has said Ayurvedic medicine has used it for “thousands” of years, and while I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s in the Manasollasa or Lokopakara manuscripts, I don’t have legible access to either of them.

    So in this case I’m blending history with a twist of modern knowledge: cucurmin’s bioavailability goes up dramatically in the presence of pepper and fat, and cinnamon and ginger and many other spices are potent anti-inflammatories (as well as being delicious). And if you’re adding chai masala as well, the difference between golden milk and golden chai comes down to whether you also simmer in some tea.

    The resemblance between dry chai masala, medieval poudre douce, and pumpkin spice is striking. I have a whole rant about the historical intersections between pumpkin pie spice and chai masala and poudre douce, with tangents through “things women are regularly mocked for enjoying, with or without pepper,” “things megacorporations time-limit and access-control,” and “things I want to enable more people to enjoy for themselves whether or not it is corporate-and-or-patriarchy-approved.” But that rant is not so cozy!

    Personally, it took me a while to warm up to turmeric drinks. In my quest for inflammatory symptom relief that wasn’t NSAIDs, most of the turmeric tisanes I’d tried tasted like I was licking my ochre art pigments. But once I found a concentration I liked, it got easier. And also tastier. 

    I’ve seen modern recipes going from “a pinch” to “a tablespoon” (!) of turmeric per cup of milk. My own balance point hits around a quarter to half teaspoon in my big 24 ounce mug, because on bad days I want to just make it once and sip on it for hours. 

    On a bad day, I’m also not going to be up for freshly hand grinding every spice. So I pregrind my chai masala. Then I use about ½ tsp chai masala to ¼ tsp turmeric, or sometimes half and half when I need extra ouch-fighting power.

    If you’re fond of skim milk or you’re using a fat free nut milk, you’ll likely want to either add a bit of coconut oil to the hot liquid or sip a spoonful of olive oil on the side. 

    I know some people enjoy “bulletproof coffee” with butter in it. And I’ve made and drunk Tibetan tea with butter and salt. But both of those strike my own taste buds as “We’ve crossed the beverage-versus-soup threshold here.” So I don’t suggest blending olive oil into your turmeric and milk, or you may find yourself wondering where the rest of your dal makhani ingredients are.

    Some useful dry chai masala / poudre douce variants 

    Easy mode: Get something already fine ground like pumpkin spice and add extra cardamom and black pepper.

    Easier mode: Use something like the Blue Lotus chai powder mentioned below, though it includes powdered tea so you will get some caffeine.

    Handcrafted for storage:

    • A couple dozen green cardamom pods, cracked and with the black seeds crushed. (Or 1 Tbsp powdered)
    • 3-4 cinnamon sticks, preferably Ceylon cinnamon, bashed up enough to fit in a spice grinder. (Or ½ Tbsp powdered) 
    • 1-2 tsp black peppercorns (or long pepper if you can find it)
    • 1-2 tsp dried ginger (not crystallized or fresh here; powder keeps longer)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp nutmeg, ideally fresh grated
    • If you can find them:
      • ½ tsp grains of paradise
      • A couple chunks of galangal
      • ½ tsp mace

    If they’re already powdered, mix them up.

    If they’re still whole, grind them all up together. 

    If you enjoy the brewing process, it doesn’t need to be ground too fine. 

    If you don’t want to have to strain it, make sure to remove the green hulls from the cardamom pods and extract the seeds before grinding. Then grind all the spices as finely as possible.

    Put the ground spices in an airtight jar and date it so you know how fresh it is. (Best within a few months; it won’t go off, it just won’t be as fragrant or as potent.)

    When you’re ready to drink:
    • 1 or 2 cups hot milk from cows or plants
      • (If skim, add a bit of coconut oil or a sliver of unsalted butter) 
      • (If you want it to be chai rather than hot milk, simmer some CTC black tea like PG Tips or Jivraj in there too)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp turmeric (to taste)
    • ¼ to ½  tsp chai masala / poudre douce above, OR pumpkin spice plus cardamom and pepper (to taste) 
    • 1 to 2 tsp honey, jaggery, or sugar (to taste)

    Simmer for 15 minutes or so, strain if needed, and serve warm.

    Scale up or down based on the size of your mug.

    Ready to drink easy mode: 

    When I’m having a bad day, my super-fast, get-it-done, not-sure-I-won’t-burn-the-milk-today version goes:

    • 1 or 2 cups hot water (not boiling)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp turmeric (to taste)
    • Half a container of Orgain’s vegan vanilla meal shake (brings enough fat for bioavailability, a lot of creaminess, a lot of vitamins, and enough sugar that I don’t add more)
    • Your chai masala / poudre douce equivalent of choice:
      • ¼ tsp your home blend, if you ground it finely enough not to need to strain it
        OR
      • ¼ tsp something like Blue Lotus original chai masala per cup
        OR
      • ¼ tsp pumpkin spice plus ⅛ tsp cardamom and several grinds of pepper per cup

    If I’m out of meal shakes I swap in 1 Tbsp milk powder and 1 tsp sugar per cup.

  • Pumpkin Spice Season and Conference Season

    ,

    Anyone else remember the old Looney Tunes “Wabbit season!…. Duck season!…. Elmer season?”

    Somehow I have pulled off the posters and found “Pumpkin Spice Season and Conference Season.” And for the love of mercy, someone needs to thin the herd somehow!

    I don’t think I’ve ever hit a schedule of 9 conferences in 5 weeks before. Flights of Foundry was two weeks ago, Rainbow Space Magic was last weekend, HearthCon and Cozy the Day Away are this weekend (I’m both presenting and running tech support), next week is WordPress Global Accessibility Day, the weekend after that is the Self-Publishing Advice Conference, and that’s before I start listing off the too-personally-identifiable conferences at my university.

    I’ve just finished making the “In case of excessive virality, break glass and transfer the load to Google” emergency backup spreadsheet of book links for the Cozy the Day Away sale, because previous sales have caused the Bluehost server to struggle under the weight of thousands of cozy fantasy fans wanting at 90some books… and this time we’ve got 160 plus the attention of the entirety of HearthCon!

    So if the server says “help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” I can throw out the spreadsheet link. The spreadsheet is not beautiful and filterable and personalized by each author… but Google can take the kind of load hits most other services can’t and keep on ticking. Still, here’s hoping cache tuning and view size reframing will buy us some breathing room? I am not actually a server admin, I am a user interface and metadata structure person. But I’ve hung out with enough server admins to have a vague idea of which words to look for in case of viral-necessary tuning?

    Anyhow, I should find a recipe to post with this!

    I have been vastly amused by the Cookbook Diss Tracks being laid down between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Ishaq al-Mawsili’s grudge chased Ziryab from Baghdad to as close to the far end of the continent as he could get without falling into the ocean… and then Ziryab turned around and set up cultural court in Cordoba and laid down the culture and etiquette and personal grooming and fine dining standards that have lasted most of the next thousand years. But that needs to be a future blog post, because I have now formally Pumpkin Spiced Myself FOR SCIENCE.

    Self, I thought, how can you call yourself a cozy fantasy writer if you have not tasted Starbucks’ own legendary Pumpkin Spice Latte? You should do that for HearthCon.

    Self, I also thought, you have not previously done this because your body really, really hates coffee. Do not do food sensitivity-adjacent biological experiments during a two day convention where you’re also tech support.

    So, last weekend and not this weekend, I turned myself into my own lab critter.

    The lab notebook annotations include:

    🎃 “Pumpkin spice” as a spice doesn’t technically have to have pumpkin itself in it, but yum! Very much nutmeg-forward on the spice blend, or else the sprinkle on the top was. I’ve been contemplating how I might add pumpkin-per-se to my own chai and reading up on how different folks recreate the pumpkin-having parts of Starbucks PSLs and came up with the variations below.

    🫠 Really, Starbucks? 21 different modification dropdown menus with over 100 options for a single beverage? My low vision self made brain-frying noises trying to navigate through the system and I just hit the “default order” button on the iced pumpkin spice chai, because there was no coffee in it (theoretically).

    🍦Have you ever accidentally melted Culver’s pumpkin ice cream and then drank it anyway? The default-settings iced pumpkin spice chai tasted very much like that to me. 

    😵 Some mistakes were made. I’d wondered if Starbucks might have enough Ambient Coffee in their water system for my food sensitivities to protest? Some empirical experimentation later: 

    🤭 Yeah it was a good thing I did this the weekend before HearthCon and Cozy the Day Away tech support, because my body went into full-on “As per my LAST EMAIL…”

    🔬 Still. Food science has been scienced, complete with accidental biohazards. For SCIENCE!

    If you’re not from the land of home-baked pumpkin pies…

    The overlap between the ingredients in chai masala, poudre douce, and what you get in a jar of McCormick’s pumpkin spice mix are pretty high. Generally speaking, you’ll take out the black pepper and cardamom and add more nutmeg, but here’s what you get in a jar of McCormick’s pumpkin spice (which does not include pumpkin itself):

    • Cinnamon
    • Ginger
    • Nutmeg
    • Allspice
    • A sulfiting agent

    Compare that to versions of poudre douce from Le Menagier de Paris:

    (One version)

    • Cinnamon
    • Ginger
    • Nutmeg
    • Grains of paradise
    • Sugar

    (Another version)

    • Cinnamon
    • Ginger
    • Cloves
    • Bay leaves

    And then compare that to the simple base and complex variations of atraf al-tib from Kitab al-Tabikh:

    • Cardamom
    • Ginger
    • Cloves
    • (optional) Bay leaves
    • (optional) Rose petals
    • (more options if you like them) Nutmeg, mace, black pepper, spikenard…

    I haven’t seen bay leaves or spikenard listed in a chai masala blend, but all the rest of it, including cinnamon and black pepper, have made appearances in different chai masala variations I’ve seen.

    I currently live in the state that produces more pumpkins than anywhere else on the continent, and lived downwind of a pumpkin packing plant for quite a while. Somehow it smells much better coming out of the can than it did going in, and I don’t know what alchemy is necessary for that to happen. But as a result, there have always been cans of pureed pumpkin available year round in my area.

    If you don’t have that available? Acorn squash or butternut squash make pretty good substitutes when you sweeten them and puree them and toss in some of the aforementioned pumpkin spice.

    Or if you enjoy egg custard, the relationship between custard tart spice and pumpkin spice is pretty high too. And an American-style (sweet) pumpkin pie is much closer to a sweet custard tart than to a savory quiche.

    When studying in the UK, the hosting university tried very earnestly to throw us a Thanksgiving feast complete with “pumpkin pie.” It was, yes, technically a pie containing pumpkin. But it was a savory pie containing slices of roasted pumpkin, skin and all, and — spoiler alert — you can’t roast most large orange carving-style pumpkins skin and all the way you could do with an eggplant. The big carveable ones have been bred to be tough enough to stand up to both overenthusiastic kids with serrated knives and squirrels delighted by the newfound entrance to the juicy meats inside, once that annoying candle in the guts burns itself out.

    So a can of pumpkin puree and a pastry pie crust is how most folks start their pumpkin pies around here. But if you don’t think you can use a whole can of pumpkin puree, or if your neighbors are avid gardeners and you haven’t locked your porch/patio/garage/car trunk/anything in which a box of squash may be “helpfully” deposited and you’re desperate for something to do with the overflow?

    Homemade pumpkin or other squash puree

    For additional Starbucksification of your hot caffeinated beverage, should you so desire.

    (The low spoons way for me to do this is to buy a can of puree, but that may not be as easy elsewhere, so…)

    • A squash or two
    • A baking dish which will hold them both when cut in half
    • Enough water to fill about 1/4 inch of the baking dish for extra steaming

    Preheat an oven to 350 F / 175 C.

    Halve your squash and take the seeds out.

    Put about 1/4 inch of water in the bottom of your baking dish.

    Put the squash cut side down on the baking dish. The water should help it steam rather than brown and glaze.

    Roast your squash for about 45 minutes to an hour, until soft when poked with a fork.

    Let it cool enough to handle, then scoop the innards away from the skin.

    Mash it up with forks, a potato masher, or a blender, your preference.

    If it’s a stringy squash you might want to press it lightly through a wire mesh sieve to extract the pulp and leave the strings behind.

    You can either spice it to taste now or add spices later. I tend to add the spices later once I know what else is going into it (eggs and cream for a pie or tart, or tea/coffee for a beverage, or maybe I would make a big bowl of Carmarthenshire Welsh stwmp with as many mashable root vegetables as I could lay hands on, in which case I’m not going to want it pre-sweet-spiced for lattefication.)

    Refrigerate until ready to use.

    Imitation Starfaring Beverage with Pumpkin And Spice

    • Pumpkin puree (as above or from a can), about 2 Tbsp per beverage
    • La Lechera squeeze bottle (easy mode) or a can of sweetened condensed milk, about 2 Tbsp per beverage
      • Avoiding cow milk? Nut or soy milks plus some sugar will be thinner but taste similar
      • Egg nog flavored non dairy creamer can also bring a very similar spice profile, in which case you probably won’t need as much pumpkin spice
      • If you aren’t using sweetened condensed milk, you may want honey or simple syrup.
    • Pumpkin spice blend (McCormick or home-blended to taste), about 1/4 tsp per beverage
    • Hot beverage of your choice (coffee, masala chai, hot milk, hot milk alternative…)
      • Making tea or masala chai? You may want to brew it stronger than usual to stand up to the extra pumpkin and milk-or-alternative.
    • Ground nutmeg to dust the top with
    • (Optional) Whipped cream or alternative
    • (Optional) Whichever of the 100some other Starbucks additions makes you happy!

    For a 12-16 oz mug:

    • 2 Tbsp ish pumpkin puree
    • 2 Tbsp ish sweetened condensed milk (squeeze bottle or can)
      OR
      Non dairy milk and sweeetener to taste
    • When preparing the hot beverage, stir the dry pumpkin spice in so that it gets a chance to cook along with the tea leaves (or the milk simmering or coffee brewing).
    • Fill most of the rest of the mug with your hot beverage.
    • Stir vigorously to blend together, and taste test to check the sweet-to-spice balance before topping.
    • (Optional) Apply whipped cream or whipped non-dairy alternative to the top of the hot beverage
    • (Optional) Dust with nutmeg

    Sip, purr, repeat.

  • Book release: “Haroun and the Study of Mischief” Gets Unleashed!

    , , ,

    Or at least it does if I have correctly flipped all the switches and clicked all the clickables!

    Haroun’s book is really personal for me. I share disability spectrums with both Shai Madhur and Haroun, and I have a lot of friends who share intersectional communities, so the afterstuff is longer than it was for Chai and Cat-tales, but the story itself is also well over twice as long even before I added in 50-some pages of recipes.

    I am also drowning in small business minutiae on very little sleep; please pardon typos. Yesterday (9/6 as I’m prewriting this), I tried to do the marketing grind and also port my whole mailing list to a new provider because the current one decided this was the perfect month to halve their free tier and start charging more than I earn in an average month from book sales. And my brain just would not cope. Neither would my body or my eyes. So instead of being on the laptop juggling spreadsheets and logins, I was flat on my back with my tablet two inches from my nose, gleefully chatting zucchini/courgettes with Lacrima Mundi, QuiteBrief, Matt Mason, and Steve Hugh Westenra.

    QuiteBrief and I both live in what I colloquially refer to as zucchini country, meaning the part of the world where at certain times of year you know you must lock your car, your porch, and/or your garage to prevent drive-by depositing of boxes of tomatoes and various gourds of a size that double as blunt instruments which were discovered under overgrown leaves by avid gardeners.

    I have had to deal with 20 pounds of assorted squash in an entirely too short time window, and so zucchini bread, many soups, many stir fries, and mad fusion crossover food like potato-zucchini fritters and Carmarthenshire Welsh-meets-Korean variants on stwmp have made it into my experimental recipe collection. Matt has some delicious looking Greek variations in that thread and QuiteBrief’s chocolate zucchini bread also sounds intriguing.

    We also bonded over a mutual appreciation of shiso, which features prominently in both Japanese and Korean food, and it makes a delightful substitute for mint with a delicate pink color (even when you use the green shiso variant) in sekanjabin. Unfortunately it doesn’t dry very well, but it’s essential in Japanese umeboshi pickles (at least in my opinion). Sekanjabin uses up a lot more of it than umeboshi do, though. I’ve also considered a shiso pesto sort of notion to blend shiso leaves with an olive and sesame oil blend and freeze in ice cubes for later use. (At some point I’m going to blog the medieval form of za’atar from Haroun’s bonus recipe collection, which is basically pesto made with thyme and walnuts instead of basil and pine nuts, and this is a note to future me to come back and link this in.)

    I confess the chat did not make my small business obligations any shorter but it was a joy and a relief to just talk about food nerdery because I wanted to, not to grind more social media marketing performances because I was obligated to.

    And since I have 50 pages of not-yet-blogged recipes from Haroun to choose from, here’s one of them! One of these days I really will get around to the mega-post about sharbat, sekanjabin, shrub, switchel, and various international variants on “sugar + acid + flavoring = beverage,” but in the meantime, here is a sweeter version of Najra’s Crimson Witches’ Brew.

    Grandmother’s Karkadeh for Good Boys, Good Girls, and Good Folks

    Technically karkadeh could be made as a sharbat, like the shahzada’s fragrant almond, khus, and sandalwood sharbat from Chai and Cat-tales. But Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew is at the other end of the scale from a sharbat even though it’s based on karkadeh. A sharbat is a sweet syrup with a particular flavor used to make drinks and sometimes dressings, karkadeh is a sweet hibiscus drink, and Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew is the sourest combination of hibiscus and other tart things that you’re willing to put in your mouth.

    There are folk tales that the pharaohs also drank karkadeh, but unfortunately I haven’t found any references more concrete than “everyone says”-type marketing materials. I wouldn’t be surprised if hibiscus drinks have been made and consumed for that long – I just can’t document it.

    Here are three variations based on whether you’d like to store sharbat concentrate and dilute to taste when you want to drink it or whether you’d like to make a cup at a time.

    A pitcher for a party like Haroun’s:

    • 1/4 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers
    • Up to the same amount of sugar (optional but customary)
    • 2 quarts of water
    • Optional: A lime or some lime juice
    • Optional: Some rose water and/or mint sprigs

    Simmer the hibiscus flowers and sugar together until the liquid is bright red and the sugar (if you’re using it) is dissolved, usually 5-10 minutes. (If some people in the party want sugar-free, you could also make the tisane without sugar and serve a container of simple syrup on the side for folks to use or not use as desired.)

    When the color and flavor are as strong as you like, strain the petals out of the karkadeh with a sieve or cheesecloth.

    Chill until you’re ready to serve.

    Taste when cool, because temperature makes a taste difference. You might want to adjust the tartness with lime and/or simple syrup at this point. Add any rosewater after chilling, so that the flavors won’t evaporate with the steam.

    Decorate the pitcher or glasses with mint sprigs if desired.

    (If you plan to serve it with ice, use less water in the simmering to start with, so it will be less diluted by the ice melting.)

    For sharbat concentrate to save and dilute later:

    Low spoons? Monin sells a tasty hibiscus syrup that’s likely intended for tea shops, but I drink enough chai to be my own tea shop. So if you need any encouragement to become your own tea shop too, go forth and brew with all the tasty benedictions!

    Making your own: Instead of making the sugar 1:1 with the hibiscus, you’ll want sugar 1:1 with water (or 2:1 with vinegar for some sharbats), so that you have a condensed syrup that you dilute to taste later. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a no-sugar alternative for this type of syrup.

    • Up to 3 cups sugar, separated
    • 2 cups water
    • 1/4 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus petals (or, if you have them fresh, as many as you can wilt into the pot)
    • (Optional) Juice and zest from 1-2 limes, about 2-4 Tbsp
    • (After cooling) Rosewater and/or mint sprigs if desired

    First, simmer the hibiscus petals and any optional lime zest for 10 minutes or so, in order for the flavor and color to be extracted. Use a sieve to strain out the petals and give them a good squeeze with the back of a spoon to extract all the liquid into the simmering pot. (I recommend removing the petals before adding the sugar because of how thick the syrup will be; you’ll lose a lot of syrup if you let it cling to the petals.)

    After the petals have been removed, while the hot hibiscus tisane is still simmering, add 2 cups of sugar gradually, stirring so that the sugar dissolves. This will be a thick syrup when cooled.

    Once 2 cups of sugar are dissolved in and the liquid is clear, adjust the sweetness/tartness with the lime juice.

    You can taste test with a tablespoon of sharbat in about a quarter cup of cold water to assess whether you’d like it stronger or sharper. Don’t entirely cool the syrup until you’re sure you have the balance you want, though; you might overcorrect the tartness with the limes and need to dissolve some of that third cup of sugar in.

    When you’re satisfied with the sweet-tart balance, cool the syrup. If you like rosewater, add a splash of it now. Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

    When serving, plan for one part syrup to three or four parts of cool water, more or less. (Again, taste testing is your friend! I use a couple tablespoons of syrup per cup of water. If you use carbonated water, you have your own karkadeh soda.)

    For a sugar-free alternative, individual servings:

    • 1-2 tsp dried hibiscus petals
    • 1-2 cups hot water
    • (Optional) Sugar-free sweetener of your choice
    • (Optional) A slice of lime or sprig of mint

    I do like hibiscus tisane without any sweetener in it as long as I don’t stack too many other bitter-makers into it. Everyone’s tastes vary, of course! You can also make a sugar-free batch at the pitcher size and offer simple syrup on the side for those who partake.