Tucked beneath the wild hibiscus plant’s creamy blossoms and sour green leaves — which we know as puliccha keerai or gongura — lies its more enduring offering to garden foragers, herbal tea brewers, juice-makers, and cake-glazers alike: the calyx that holds the whorl, the inimitable little roselle. Our first encounter with it is after the wild hibiscus flowers have puckered and withered away, leaving what looks like a little red hand, fingers gathered, encasing a growing seed pod. The roselle’s sourness mimics the Hibiscus Sabdariffa’s leaves, but the calyces are juicier. Dipped in sugar or muddled with it, they’re the perfect base for a cool summer Agua Fresca (just add soda or water).
However, the roselle’s beautiful magenta-pink takes heating to extract, and much depends on whether you’re in the mood for a simple tea, a syrup (equal parts sugar and boiled-and-strained roselle water), a mirror glaze to reflect its tang, or a jar of jam. The latter will take greater roselle quantities, more sugar, more boiling, and all the pectin you can extract from the green seed pods (which have to be removed and discarded anyway).
The mirror glaze is a nice midway option: a teaspoon of powdered gelatine bloomed in a cup and half of roselle syrup, gently heated to dissolve, then cooled slightly and poured over a cheesecake that needs that red mirror-finished tang on top. (If you use agar agar or ‘China grass’ in place of gelatine, be sure to give it a boil or it won’t set). Increase quantities and you could set it in jelly moulds for a kiddie birthday treat.
This column helps you figure out how those pesky weeds in your garden serve a purpose. Reddy is a cultural anthropologist who lives, works, cooks and gardens between Pondicherry and Auroville. She blogs at paticheri.com.
