During a recent trip to Dubai, I found Iranian Saffron treads were available at an amazing price compared to what it costs in the US - so I came home with 20+ grams!
In the past, saffron was a luxury reserved for a big paella dinner, or the occasional saffron rice dish when I was craving it. However, now I have enough to experiment. Ideas?
After looking at various recipes, I didn’t realize how many Sicilian recipes use saffron - like this:
…in fact, I never considered saffron as a component in red sauce.
Spices are highly marked up, so it’s possible you got a great deal. But saffron is also graded, so you might not be getting the highest quality if the price was too good to be true. (For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume you got the good stuff, certainly I hope you did.)
I used to use saffron is making an aioli, which is fairly simple but super flavorful (you can google recipes; I normally went egg yolk, lemon juice, salt, garlic, saffron). It’s very good with seafood, particularly shellfish (scallops, crab cake, etc.).
Corey - I thought the same when I first saw what was available, however they had several grades at the spice shop: first, second and third ‘cutting’. The first was by far the most pungent - and I’ve since compared it to the La Mancha Spanish Saffron I’d been getting at Costco, and they seem to be on-par.
However, considering I was buying at about $2.50/gram, I can afford to add a little extra…
Put saffron in water or broth, heat it, steep it. Saute squash in olive oil, add saffron liquid, which will infuse squash. Dish is done when squash is nicely browned with liquid burned off.
Since you have some to play around with you should put some in a bottle of vodka, it might work out well and you could have a nice saffron vodka and tonic. Would also be good to use the saffron vodka in a ice cream.
Shake in cocktail shaker with a few ice cubes for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain into lowball glass with salted rim. Add 2-3 ice cubes. Mmmmm…now Lauren wants to smuggle bottles of saffron simple syrup when we go to Puerto Vallarta next month!
“counterfeit” saffron raid in Spain;
“Arrests follow two-year investigation into gang believed to be importing spice from Iran and selling it as prized Spanish variety”