Saffron 101

Every Sunday, I buy my jam, tomatoes, carrots (and the occasional rum flavored chouquette), from Martine and Didier Caron at the small stand on the side of the church. They also produce their own saffron. Saffron grows plentifully in Provence, and like the chickpeas and spelt - it was a local ingredient I quickly incorporated into my everyday cuisine. Of course, saffron is not an everyday ingredient - I'd be bankrupt if it was...)

France has made me a bit shy about asking people for things, so it took me a year to work up to the courage to casually inquire if I could come and see the harvest. Saffron is one of the few ingredients in my French kitchen whose origins remain mysterious to me. I have no problem identifying the stuff in the jar, but no real idea what it looks like when it pops out of the ground. I gave Didier my cellphone number and hoped they would call. He did.

The saffron harvest is quick - two or three weeks in Sept/Oct, before the first frost. We drove to La Ferme de la Charite, in the back country of Forcalquier. We passed knotted pines, knotched with short spikes like the rungs on a ladder. We got lost a few times on the back roads around Les Tourettes. The signs (when there were signs) began to indicate hamlets, rather than villages or towns.

When we arrived at the farm, yesterday's harvest was already on the table outside the kitchen door, hundreds of delicate purple flowers, recently denuded of their valuable threads.

Saffron is one of the world's most expensive spices. When I asked Didier why, he pointed to the black plastic crates of flowers. "La main-d'oeuvre" - the labor, he said. Saffron is a crop that simply cannot be mechanized. To give you an idea, they produced 90 grams of saffron last year, from 17,000 flowers. To make a kilogram (2.2 lbs), it takes roughly 225,000 flowers - all picked and plucked by hand. A kilogram sells for approximately 30,000 Euros.

We headed out to a field dotted with lavendar blooms, with a spectacular view of the surrounding hills. In these situations, it's best to tell people I'm a New Yorker upfront; it gives me an excuse to ask one or two really dumb city-girl questions. I walked gingerly around some pellet sized droppings, "Do you spread the rabbit dung, or do they just come by themselves? "Sheep." said Martine. "Those are sheep droppings." Ah. This is a country where a girl had best know her dung. "Where are the sheep?" I asked, looking around. "In the freezer." answered Didier, "They make less noise. "

The saffron we use comes from the Crocus sativus or saffron crocus.

There are three deep orange stigmas per flower. Occaisionally you come arcross a flower with six - like a cat with 6 fingers on each front paw.

"Ca va les reins?" Martine was inquiring after my kidneys, which tend to get a bit squished by spending hours bent over in a field. "Ca va." I said. We swapped recipes as we moved along the rows. She was fond of saffron risotto. I told her about the saffron peach/nectarine compote I had made a few weeks before. I was dying to try some carrot saffron muffins, which I'd tasted at a local market.

When we finished the day's picking - buds just poking out of the ground would be ready tomorrow - we sat down at the table and began gently removing the orange threads with the press of a fingernail.

The lot would be spread out on a cookie sheet and dried at a low heat (60C), for about half an hour. Then Martine leaves it overnight in the oven (open just a crack) to dry out - then into bottles of .5 or 1 gram each.

As the afternoon sun began to slant low, they walked us around the farm. Augustin would have happily spent the night in the seat of the tractor; we introduced ourselves to the geese, the goats, a beautiful bull and a 900lb pig I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

I left one step closer to understanding the origins of my spice cabinet, with thoughts of a saffron risotto - and a silent vow to study my types of animal dung.