the rose petal spoon sweet of the Bulgarian Rose Valley: damask petals rubbed with sugar and lemon, cooked briefly in a light syrup so they stay whole and pink, and offered to a guest on a small dish
Origin: Bulgaria
From the journey of Rose.
Ottoman administration carried the damask rose into its Rumelian provinces, and in the long sheltered valley between the Balkan range and the Sredna Gora it found conditions so nearly perfect that the region has been the Rose Valley ever since: high humidity, sandy well-drained soil, mild winters, and cool mornings that hold the oil in the petal a little longer. Bulgaria became, and with Turkish Isparta remains, one of the two great sources of rose otto on earth, and the harvest is the defining event of the rural calendar; the flowers are picked by hand between about five and ten in the morning through late May and June, because the oil falls away once the sun is up, and something like three thousand kilogrammes of petals yield a single kilogramme of oil. What the valley keeps for itself is sladko. A Balkan sladko is not a jam and is not eaten on bread: it is a spoon sweet, in which whole fruit or, here, whole petals are held intact in a clear light syrup, and it is served on a small dish or a saucer with a glass of cold water and a cup of coffee, offered to a visitor within moments of their arrival in a rite of hospitality that runs from Bulgaria through Serbia and Greece to Turkey and the Levant. Rose is the most prized of them all.
Damask petals give the fullest scent and are what the Rose Valley uses; any heavily perfumed unsprayed rose will serve, but a modern hybrid tea bred for looks rather than smell will give a pretty preserve that tastes of very little. The lemon juice is not optional: it fixes the colour, balances an otherwise cloying sweetness, and supplies the acid the syrup needs to keep. Beyond the saucer and the coffee, sladko ot rozi is spooned over thick yoghurt, over vanilla ice cream, and over the Bulgarian baked custard krem karamel, stirred into hot water as a rose tea, and used as a filling for pastries. The Turkish gül reçeli is the same idea worked to a firmer, jammier set and eaten at breakfast with clotted kaymak and bread.
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