"rosewater" news and stories

Kitchen gardens just aren't enough anymore. A small but growing number of chefs and restaurateurs are taking local to a new level, raising their own meat, keeping honey bees and tending goats to make cheese.

Chef Dan Barber and his acclaimed Blue Hill restaurants helped pioneer the trend. Both his Greenwich Village and Hudson Valley outposts draw from Barber's four-season farm at the Stone Barns Center for Agriculture, about an hour north of New York City. The seven-year-old farm, which also serves as an educational center (Michelle Obama and a group of school kids visited last September), provides the restaurants with everything from banana squash to veal. It's a model that translates best to wide-open spaces. In Aspen, Colorado, for instance, the Little Nell hotel's executive chef, Ryan Hardy, grows produce and raises livestock on his 15-acre Rendezvous Farms. He even makes his own cheese.

In LA, Mashti Malone's ice cream is a a bit of a cult hit. No, it's not ice cream from an Irish-Iranian family. Mashti and Mehdi Shirvani grew up in a small town in northern Iran, and after immigrating to Los Angeles, took over Mugsy Malone's Ice Cream Parlor, but didn't have enough money to change the sign completely. They could only change the first half, and thus Mugsy Malone's became Mashti Malone's.

Mashti's has several flavors that include Mango, Orange blossom, and Pomegranate, but it' the Rosewater flavors for which people come back. There is Creamy Rosewater, Rosewater Saffron with Pistachios, and Ginger Rosewater. If you have an ice cream maker and can find rosewater at a local Persian or Asian market, you can use this recipe from the Citizen Times to make what they call "Persian Ice Cream," basically the same as Mashti's Rosewater, Saffron, and Pistachio.

Persian Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1/2 of a vanilla bean
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon saffron
1/3 cup rosewater
1 cup finely chopped pistachios

Bring half-and-half to a boil, add vanilla bean and saffron. Beat egg yolks and sugar together. Add half-and-half mixture slowly to yolks, then cook over simmering water until thickened. Remove, cool in an ice bath, add rosewater. Refrigerate overnight. Strain through a fine strainer, add pistachios, and freeze in ice cream maker.

Serves 4 to 6.