I’m just mad about saffron
Saffron is back in the UK after an absence of several hundred years. Julie Harding visits the grower of a spice more valuable than gold
Julie Harding meets a grower
The delicate threads smell of a strangely heady mix of new leather and tobacco
ASMALL strip of land at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk turned lilac late last year. Thousands of Crocus sativus burst into flower between October and January, creating a vibrant carpet bordered by contrasting matte-brown earth. Now vanished, the cup-shaped flowers that produced saffron —dried red threads that, gramme for gramme, are more valuable than gold—have been replaced by chive-like leaves.
‘I love the sight of the flowers,’ declares David Smale, inspecting his one-acre rectangle of C. sativus, his boots clogged with heavy clay soil. ‘It’s always such a relief to see them. Saffron will often not flower.’
A geophysicist by profession, Mr Smale set up English Saffron in 2004, largely to sate his passion for growing things, but also because he felt Britain deserved homegrown saffron after an absence of several hundred years. He’s now a member of a tiny band of growers running the gauntlet of the British climate to produce a spice that’s more usually cultivated under sunnier skies, mainly in Iran, Spain, India and Greece.
The formative years of the company consisted of trial and numerous errors. Mr Smale lost his first crop after soaking the corms in petrol to stop them becoming a wildlife snack and they disintegrated in the ground.
The operation is now fully organic and he cultivates three acres annually and sells online, as well as via Fortnum & Mason, Partridges in Chelsea, the shop at Kentwell Hall (soon) and the Tourist Information Centre in Saffron Walden, Essex, the town that gained its unique prefix to signify its position as the heartland of the spice’s production in the Middle Ages.
Today, the market town’s display garden is a nod to an industry that began in the 14th century, but died out 400 years later due to rising labour costs and inexpensive imports. In that time, it all but coloured a country, gilding hair and clothes as well as food. In Hans Holbein’s famous portrait of Henry VIII, the monarch’s hose are blonded by saffron.
Twenty-five miles from Saffron Walden, Kentwell Hall, which regularly hosts Tudor re-enactment days, is an appropriate growing site and landowner Patrick Phillips is supportive of Mr Smale’s endeavour, allowing him free use of an acre. Head gardener Amy Mccormack looks after a tiny display bed of saffron in the walled garden, appropriately grown in the shadow of old English costard and catshead apple trees. ‘We want to be able to show people the saffron and tell them it was here in the Tudor period,’ she says.
Mr Smale made numerous trips from his Chelmsford home to Kentwell last year, as well as to his own two acres in Essex—first in August, to plant the corms by hand over five days with a couple of hired staff, then to weed the patches and, finally, to pick the flowers. An experienced picker can harvest 1,000 flowers an hour and an adept processor can extract 500 red stigma trios (the saffron) from the petal hood within 60 minutes. The stigmas are then air-dried and cured using a secret method. ‘Drying takes up to two weeks,’ explains Mr Smale. ‘After that, the strands will be put in a light-proof container and kept so the flavours can mature.’
Over a cup of coffee in Kentwell’s cafe, he extracts a few strands from a tiny plastic envelope to show me. The pack contains 0.2g of saffron, or 30–45 strands, the yield of 10– 15 flowers—little wonder it retails for £7.50.
The delicate threads smell of a strangely heady mix of new leather and tobacco, but, once infused properly (in near-boiling water at least two hours before cooking, a process, says Mr Smale, many professional chefs get wrong), they’ll go on to tint and flavour a vast array of culinary delights. ‘I love making chicken Florentine with saffron,’ he notes. ‘Pan-fry the chicken, wilt the spinach and add the saffron at the end in the infused cream.’
English Saffron has several devotees among celebrated restaurants. Its bloodorange filaments can be found in the River Cottage’s kitchen, as well as in Cyrus Todiwala’s award-winning Café Spice Namasté Indian restaurant. ‘I went to cook with Cyrus, taking him crocus flowers and, probably for the first time in hundreds of years, we practised wet-saffron cooking. He even put a whole flower in the rice, which was lovely,’ remembers Mr Smale. ‘I’m hoping to bring saffron into the 21st century,’ he adds. ‘But I also want to keep the traditions.’ English Saffron (www.englishsaffron. co.uk)