Saffron

Saffron runs through the whole history of Mediterranean and Persian civilisations. The frescoes of Santorini, nearly four thousand years old, show young women gathering the crocus. The Persians dyed royal cloth with it and perfumed their rice; Ayurveda and Greco-Roman medicine saw it as a precious spice of mind and heart.

Saffron comes from the three red stigmas of a small autumn crocus, Crocus sativus, a sterile plant that reproduces only by human hand. Its rarity is no market whim: it lies in the harvest, which must be done at dawn on the very day the flower opens, and in the delicate drying of the filaments.

Three molecules form its signature: crocin, the water-soluble carotenoid that gives that incomparable gold; picrocrocin, responsible for taste; and safranal, released on drying, which carries the aroma. Beyond cooking, Persian, Ayurvedic and Chinese pharmacopoeias have always held it to be a spice of joy — and modern research has looked into its support for a positive mood.

We never boil it: a few threads infused in a little warm water or plant milk, for twenty minutes, release all the colour and aroma. We then pour this golden infusion into a rice, a golden milk, a cream — a pinch is enough for a whole dish.