Saffron Room Journal
Why we bloom saffron in warm milk overnight
Five threads, eight hours, and the reason our kulfi is the colour of an Abuja sunset.
The most expensive spice in the room
Saffron is the dried stigma of a crocus flower. Each flower gives three threads, and it takes about one hundred and fifty flowers to make a single gram. We buy ours once a year from a cooperative in Kashmir and keep it in a locked cabinet with a log book.
A gram costs us more than a kilo of our best goat. So we treat it carefully, and we never use it as a colouring.
Why warm milk, and why overnight
Saffron releases colour fast and aroma slowly. If you drop it into hot liquid, you get colour in a minute but most of the scent stays locked in. Warm milk at about 50 degrees, covered and left overnight in the cold room, gives both.
By morning the milk is deep gold and smells of honey and hay. That milk becomes the base of the kulfi, which then freezes slowly for twelve hours.
How to try it at home
Crush five threads between your fingers into a small cup of warm milk. Cover it and leave it in the fridge overnight. Use it in rice, in a custard or in tea the next day.
If your saffron makes the milk yellow in seconds and smells of nothing, it may not be real saffron. Real threads colour slowly and smell strongly.
Next step
Taste it for yourself
The dish in this story is on the tasting menu this month.