By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Flo Stanley's Lokelani Cake is flavored with roses and
surrounded by rose geranium leaves and Damask blossoms.
The single slice is topped with candied roses. In the bottles
are rose syrup, vinaigrette and jam.

Lovely to look at,
lovely to eat

By Betty Shimabukuro
Star-Bulletin

A rose is a rose is a rose is a meal. An elegant, fragrant, romantic meal, guaranteed to impress.

Flo Stanley, the "herb lady" of Lyon Arboretum, lately has turned her attention to roses as food. She is not alone.

Author Cathy Wilkinson Barash, in her book "Edible Flowers," lists roses among the Big 10 of edible flowers, putting them at the forefront of what could be the next wave in food trends.

"I see cooking with edible flowers as the new culinary frontier, continuing on where cooking with fresh herbs leaves off," writer Rosalind Creasy says in the forward to Barash's book.

Stanley is a veteran herb gardener who started growing roses for the culinary possibilities. She can talk you through a menu from drinks to dessert, all made of roses, and she will, at a class on Saturday.

But she says you're best off with just one rose dish per meal. More would be overkill. Besides, scraping up more than a dozen or so pesticide-free roses is likely to be a problem.

Stanley uses no pesticides anywhere in her garden, and although Japanese beetles do get to the leaves of her rose plants, they pretty much leave the blossoms alone, and that's the part she needs anyway.

Rules of the rose Beware! Only use flowers you know to be pesticide-free. Use of chemical fertilizers is OK. Best blossoms: Must be fragrant and tender. Flavors range from overtones of apple to cinnamon to mint, but some can be bitter, so taste first. White out: Remove the white "heels" of the petals; they're bitter. Save up: Petals may be refrigerated or frozen in sealed plastic bags to allow time to collect enough for a recipe. Beware, Part 2: Avoid roses or any edible flowers if you have allergies or hay fever.

Her recommended strategy is to plant extra, "so you can share with the beetles."

Stanley's Rose Petal Jam draws its delicate, unique flavor from four cups of petals and a half-dozen rose geranium leaves. It tastes pretty much the way roses smell. She uses it between layers of her Lokelani Cake, which is flavored with rose water.

To cook with roses you pretty much have to grow your own, or make real good friends with someone else who does. There is no local source for pesticide-free rose petals.

But supplying your own is not so hard, Stanley says. "Even though I only have time to water, and there are a lot of weeds I have to pull out, and I don't have time to fertilize as well as I'd like -- they're still doing so well."

She suggests Damask roses because they're hardy, bug-resistant and prolific. Author Barash also likes the plants that go by the names rosa rugosa and apothecary rose.

Barash has been growing roses organically for 20 years, using insecticidal soap and Japanese beetle traps to keep bugs and fungus away.

But Stanley says that's more complicated than necessary. She practices the flood-'em-out philosophy: Water plants well in the morning or late afternoon (not in the evening; that encourages fungus). Spray from the undersides of the leaves, where the bugs hang out.

"This disrupts their life cycle so the insects get discouraged."

Did you know? Catholic Rosary beads were traditionally made of a mixture of chopped rose petals, salt and water. Red roses symbolize the blood of Christ; white roses the Immaculate Conception. The Romans introduced the eating of rose petals to Europe. In Victorian England they were used in sweet and savory dishes.

As she cuts the flowers for her recipes, she trims off the stems and simply sticks them in the ground to make new plants. It's a circle of life that seems to work.

If you're already growing roses, you can set aside some new plants for eating by going cold turkey on the pesticides. If you continue to spray elsewhere in your garden, put your eating roses in pots or put a lot of distance between them and other plants.

Dick Tsuda, insect identification specialist with the College of Tropical Agriculture at the University of Hawaii, says he knows of no research on how long a pesticide remains in the system of a rose plant, so the safest thing would be to start new plants. A plant grown from the cuttings of an existing plant, even one that has been sprayed, would be safe by the time it bloomed, he says. And that only takes a month or so.

At her class Saturday, Stanley will prepare a chicken dish with rose petals and pomegranate sauce, but to get that recipe you'll have to take the class. She did offer the rose recipes that follow. And if you'd like to venture into entree category, there's a recipe from Barash's "Edible Flowers."

Lokelani Cake

2-1/4 cup sifted cake flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup sour milk or buttermilk, divided use
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons rose water
Rose Petal Jam (recipe follows)

Sift together dry ingredients and set aside.

Beat egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar until stiff peaks form. Mixture should still be glossy; do not overbeat. Set aside.

Add oil, 1/2 cup milk and flavorings to the dry ingredients. Beat well for 2-3 minutes, then add the rest of the milk and the yolks. Beat another 2-3 minutes, then gently fold in the meringue mix.

Pour into 2 greased and floured 8- or 9-inch pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

When cakes are done, turn out onto platter. Spread jam over the bottom layer, top with the second layer and dust with powdered sugar. Decorate with roses, rose petals or candied roses.

Rose Petal Jam

6 scented rose geranium leaves
3 cups water
4 cups rose petals, white heels removed, cut up coarsely
1 box powdered pectin
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 cups sugar

Wrap geranium leaves in a coffee filter or cheesecloth and tie with string. Bring water to a boil and add rose petals and geranium leaves. Steep 20-30 minutes. Remove pouch of leaves, squeezing out liquid.

Add pectin and lemon juice, stirring to dissolve pectin. Bring to a rolling boil. Add sugar, bring back to a boil and boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Pour into sterile jelly jars and seal. Fills 5 to 6 8-ounce jars.

Bubbly Rosy Lemonade

2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup pesticide-free red and/or pink rose petals, heels removed
1/2 cup lemon verbena leaves
1 tablespoon rose water
Club soda, to taste
Fresh lemon juice, to taste

Bring water and sugar to a boiling a non-aluminum pan. Stir to dissolve sugar and simmer gently 2-3 minutes. Add rose petals and lemon verbena, remove from heat, cover and let cool.

Strain into jar or bottle; add rose water to taste. Refrigerate.

To serve, pour syrup over ice and add twice as much club soda. Add lemon juice to taste.

Yields about 3 cups syrup.

Rose Chicken

"Edible Flowers," by Cathy Wilkinson Barash,
Fulcrum Publications, $25

1 frying chicken, cut in 8 pieces
1/4 cup rose water
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup graham crackers, crushed
3 tablespoons dark rose petals, finely chopped
1/8 teaspoon salt

Coat chicken in rose water and marinate up to 4 hours in the refrigerator.

Combine remaining ingredients and use mixture to coat each chicken piece. Bake in a lightly greased, shallow pan, 35 minutes at 375 degrees. Serves 4.

Nutritional information unavailable for these recipes.*

Everything's
Coming Up Roses

Instructor: Flo Stanley
Class time: 9:30 a.m. Saturday
Place: Lyon Arboretum
Cost: $22
Call: 988-7378, enrollment limited