Rachel Roddy’s recipe for saffron and tomato rice | A kitchen in Rome

Laborious to harvest and extortionately priced, the sunset-coloured stigmas of the saffron crocus have an extraordinarily warm, pungent taste. Fortunately, however, a little goes a very long way … The saffron crocus has six lilac-purple flowers, three yellow stamens and three orange-red stigmas that extend beyond the petals like the wiry antennae of an insect. The thread-like stigmas have to be picked only by hand when the flowers are fully open, a laborious, finickety job that hasn’t changed much since ancient times. Then, to avoid the colour and flavour fading, the stigmas need to be dried very quickly, a process that reduces their weight by about 80%. Tens of thousands of fiery-looking filaments are required to produce half a kilogram of the dried threads, which make the “hay” or powder we know as saffron and explains the exorbitant cost. Fortunately, just a few threads of this precious spice go a long way. Native to Crete, Iran and south-west Asia, the saffron crocus has been cultivated since the dawn of civilisation for its medicinal properties, as well as for use in cosmetics, perfume, food and as a dye. According to Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food, the