Rose hips

[chattius 2,533]

Flame the movie 'Hannibal Raising' but our daughters hadn't much appetite to eat rose hips in any variant last year. The song which is like a red thread through the movie is a famous german kids song.

 

 

german and english translation of songtext:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_song_does_hannibal_sing_in_hannibal_rising

 

The text is a riddle about a rose hip.

 

My family used rose hips for centuries, mainly because tomatoes weren't riping in our climate. With more robust tomatoes nowadays and because it is easier to work tomatoes than rose hips, I wonder if other people are still using them. If there is any recipe which includes tomatoes, it seems that rose hips can be used the same way. Mainly rose hips from wild roses are used and the seeds and fine hairs removed.

 

If the rose hips are not heated they are full of vitamins and radical catchers. So when the first frosts hits the rose hips they sweeten, moving more sugar into the fruits. Not heated rose hip puree does a very tasty and healthy sauce on spaghetti. The removed skin is dried and used for tea, the removed fine hairs ...

 

 

 

The hairs did a nice itching powder. When we were around 12/13 years old we used it to pour it into the shirts of girls. I wasn't always a nice boy. I carefully listened when old people spoke about medical usage of herbs and to my shame I always remembered the ones which could be used for jokes way better

 

 

 

...well read the spoiler if you want to read about my sins as a boy.

 

The seeds were pressed for oil --- a skin cleaner and doing a soft skin.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_hip_seed_oil

 

Could be used at acne and to prevent belly scars from a pregnancy...

 

 

 

Doing rose hip puree is way harder than doing tomatoe puree, so using every part of a rose hip was way less wasted time.

[czevak 57]

We did a nice Jam from them las year, and yes it is way too much work to scrounge the seeds and hair out of those little buggers.

 

The taste is reward enough though.

[gogoblender 3,071]

I actually liked the entire movie series, the novels were very well written, that info on the song now is going to echo in my head for a bit^^

 

Actually, when I was a kid, I hated rose water or anything with rose essence in it.

 

It was reminiscent of a lot of deserts from my parents' upbringing, sweets which I found strange, and a bit off key for my more, by then, North-Americanized palate.

 

Chocolate please!

 

Course, tastes change, and I've come to love the taste of rose essence flavors, (lol boy I hope this is kind of connected to the rose hips of this topic!) and have even, when in the mood, indulged myself in a turkish delight...yum!

 

It was only now, that I've been reading about this rose flavor, that I've found out that my favorite indian desert of all time, gulab Jamun, ia apparently flavored with rose!

 

I don't think I've ever eaten those rose hips chattius per se chattius, but if I was ever in a resto and they were ofrered as a topping, I'd definitely give it a try.

 

 

gogo

[czevak 57]

 

I don't think I've ever eaten those rose hips chattius per se chattius, but if I was ever in a resto and they were ofrered as a topping, I'd definitely give it a try.

 

I don't think you will see them commercially offered anywhere because of the time and effort needed in their preparation. But you can collect them yourself around this time of year and have a healthy treat.

[chattius 2,533]

You can buy raw unboiled rose hip puree: It is like 2Euro per 100gramm and only available at a Reformhaus(english wiki uses the german word, perhaps a health food store?) from late September to around february. The sweeter the more frost the fruits got.

 

 

But in my opinion: Best is to collect rose-hips at a dragon hunt. Drachen is the german word for both: a dragon or a kid's kite. So while the kids have their kite's flying and hunt for the ones which crashed - we look for wild rose bushes. So the health of the rose hips actually starts with collecting them, doing a walk in fresh cold air with whole family.

 

Kite:

I think the english word is connected to the bird Milan= kite, which uses to soar in the air.

The german word for the kite = Drachen is because kites were used to scare enemy lines:

 

 

A dragon-shape like build with an open air collecting mouth was put on either pipes or connected to a hose. So while riding their was a flying dragon and the air in the pipe was lead to a scary sounding horn.

[cider_steve 26]

I think I'll stick with beef and onions on my pizza !

[Bondbug 32]

Where do you get these these ideas Steve? Yes there is rose hip syrup, but other than that beware. It is not for nothing that the French call them "gratte-cul" - they give you a bad itch in your annus-mirabilis, mate.

[chattius 2,533]

Yes the hairs/fibres attached to the seeds do a fine itching powder, and most people fear that their digesting system will be disturbed. Removing the hairs is time eating, so it is normally an afternoon at a rainy weekend. Washing the fruits, cutting away top and bottom, halving, removing seeds and hairs, ... and all this for such tiny fruits.

 

But we live in modern times, and there is a cheap trick how you can save a big amount of time. Just wash the fruits. Deep freeze them for 2 days. Freezing will A) make them sweeter and B) easier to work with.

 

Use a scroll saw to cut away the top and button of the frozen fruits and put the frozen headless fruits into a plastic or linnen bag. Hammer the bag on a hard surface till the fruits splinter into small pieces. Only the fruit-flesh will do fine tiny splinters, the seeds with the hairs will normally stay more or less intact. Use a sieve or centrifuge to filter away the biggest parts- which are now the seeds.

 

I like using a scroll saw on frozen fruits, my wife prefers cutting top and bottom before freezing. But my problem is that I transform the fruits into a juicy mesh while trying to cut them - hand surgery destroyed some of my fine motorics. But the freezer trick works fine after some training.

 

Wildroses in my area are Heckenrose ((Rosa corymbifera, hag-rose?) and Hundsrose (dog rose, rosa canina). The first one has bigger flowers, less and smaller thorns than the dog-rose.

[essjayehm 58]

OMG, that's genius, Chattius!

 

Leave it to men to use power-tools for food prep!

[chattius 2,533]

Yes, wait till quinces are ripe. The fruits are so hard that I use a bone chopper axe, electric knives, electric cross cut saw, ... to cut/chop/ and hack them in small pieces. The fruits have hairs and instead to polish them away I put them in the cloth dryer with some towels and rotate themn at 800turns the minute.

 

Quinces from mediterran are way softer than the ones we have here. We have way less sun and so you have to wait for first frosts to have them sweet. But then the outer part is dehydrated and hard.

[gogoblender 3,071]

From rose hips to sweet power saw

 

I'm sold!

 

:trans:

 

gogo

[Sirius 16]

Rose hips? Never even heard of that.

Whenever I see something that looks like a rose on food, it's usually on to top of the icing on the cake, and I am all over that rose in the matter of seconds.

 

On pizza, I usually stick to cheese, ham/beef and tomato sauce underneath.

It is quite possible to improvise. For example, you can mix shrimps and ham on a cheese pizza.

Very tasty, believe me.

[chattius 2,533]

Rose hips don't look like roses. Roses and apples are same plant family. in our area the Apfelrose (apple-rose) was cultivated with rose hips looking like small apples (or nowadays tomatoes). So replacing tomatoes with rose hips is not too far away.

 

 

Sweet rose hips from hagrose ready to be harvested after the frost movd sugar into the fruits:

 

Dog roses were used as natural walls and fences in old times here. In winter the rose hips were like an iron ration of vitamins. As a boy I liked to pick up some when doing a walk with dogs in winter and eat them on the walk. Break them open, use a fingernail to rub away seeds with the nasty hairs and eat them raw. Sadly the european car travel nowadays brought the fox-band worm into our area and I won't eat something unwashed from near ground level in open nature anymore. You can see the fine hairs here:

 

[Sirius 16]

Ah yes, I am very familiar with those!

My grandparents have a row of rose hip bushes outside their house.

Grandpa used to pick them and give them to me when I was little.

And those dog roses have like seeds with tiny hair that would itch terribly?

I remember I used to put those on the back of the neck of my classmates when I was in elementary school.

Not very popular, but very fun. Haha.