One of the best things about traveling is the opportunity to taste fresh fruits and vegetables that we might not otherwise have an opportunity to know. When I travel to other parts of the country and the world, I love to go to the market and look for fruit that is unfamiliar to me. That was the case with this package of prickly green berries that I found at a supermarket in a little town on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Have you ever seen these before?
They're gooseberries! I had tried gooseberries before — but only in the form of jam (from IKEA — hardly local and unique!). Gooseberry jam has a pleasant tang and an acidic sweetness, and it is actually my very favorite thing to pair with plain yogurt.
But I had never seen fresh gooseberries until I found this package at a supermarket in Vancouver Island, BC. My husband and I were staying outside a little village on the east coast during the last leg of our recent vacation, and we wandered into the grocery store to buy some coffee. I spotted these in the produce section, but they didn't have any sort of label, except for a sticker proclaiming them as locally grown.
I had just been at the UBC Botanical Gardens, though, and seen red gooseberries growing in their edible garden.
Gooseberries, as you can see, grown on low, scrappy bushes, and they're quite common and even wild throughout much of Great Britain and parts of Europe and Asia. In the United States, however, they aren't as common; they've been considered carriers of white pine blister rust, and it's still illegal to cultivate them in some parts of the country. So they just aren't as commonly used here. But they seem to like the moist, cool climate of Vancouver Island, and apparently they are grown there; there were heaps in the grocery store.
What do they taste like? They are quite tart, although larger, softer berries were sweeter. They have a prickly fuzz, and little "tops and tails" on either end from the stem and flower. You pull these off, then eat the berry whole. They were very refreshing and delicious, but after we smuggled them back home, I decided to make jam with the remnant. See the recipe and result tomorrow!
Do you cook with gooseberries?
Related: Recipe of the Day: Gooseberries and Cream
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I just came home with some a few hours ago. I usually make compote, using elderflower cordial instead of sugar for sweetening.
Gooseberries come in many colors and sizes in our Willamette Valley. The smaller green ones make delicious gooseberry-apricot jam and gooseberry pie. Gooseberries, though, are a labor of love...the stem and dried flower bud need to be nipped off each berry which is very time consuming but well worth it.
Gooseberries are delicious cooked with a little sugar and topped with mascarpone. My grandfather's favorite pie was gooseberry--they also make a great chutney.
I just had my first fresh gooseberries recently--so good! Here's a picture of some red gooseberries from the DC area.
http://newatthemarket.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-new-favorite-snack.html
Mennonites of Russian origin make a kind of fruit soup with fruit, milk/cream, and sugar, thickening it with flour. It is usually served chilled in summer and hot in winter. I've mostly had it with cherries or chokecherries, but my sister-in-law makes it with gooseberries. It is surprisingly tasty.
We used to pick these off the bush and eat them at summer camp in Michigan.
Gooseberry pie was a fabled dessert of my childhood. I never actually tried it, but I always heard stories about my older relatives picking wild gooseberries and baking a pie back in the day.
I just saw these at the farmer's market in NYC this morning. It's good to know what do with them - I've never actually eaten one.
Hope you had a great time on the Island! I guess I take for granted the variety of fruit veg we get here, as gooseberries are just one in the list of berry-like things we look forward to in the summer. I make jam and pie out of the gooseberries, but often will mix with other seasonal fruit on the cusp of their season. Strawberries are just finishing, and raspberries just starting, so often don't have a full helping of either for a pie.
When I was little, we had a gooseberry bush outside our Chicago home. The ugly little scraggly guy has long since been uprooted.
I loved eating the berries, but I think it was mostly that thrill of being able to pick something from outside, wash it off under the hose (under mom's insistence only, of course), and be able to just pop it in my mouth. As I grew older, I remember enjoying them less.
Just recently I was given some local gooseberries as a surprise present from my mum. Though I am very familiar with them from my childhood (we had a bush in the backyard when I grew up), I didn't have much experience of cooking with them as an adult.
I thought about a gooseberry chutney or sauce for duck, but wanted to go for something sweet.
I made a gooseberry and elderflower ice cream that we had for dessert last night at a dinner party. It was a bit of a hassle since the compote had to be strained after cooking to remove the skins and most seeds, but the ice cream was creamy and sweet-tart - downright delectable though I say so myself.
As a child in England we had a Gooseberry bush in our garden and I hated them! Maybe it was because my mom only ever made Gooseberry crumble. Anyway, I'm dying to try them again...I'm sure I'd love them now!
I'm just reading MFK Fisher's Alphabet for Gourmets -- I was curious reading about the fruit cup "from a can marked with some faintly varying version of the following: 'diced Bartlett pears, diced yellow peaches, pineapple tidbits, best gooseberries, artificially colored, artificially flavored modified cherries in heavy syrup.'" It sounds like the sort of gross fruit salad you get in cans today, except the gooseberries, which I also have never tried. Did they fall out of fashion sometime this century? I'm kind of perplexed.
they appear in the supermarkets here from time to time, and also at markets. i haven't seen them for a few years though.
i never get a chance to cook with them because i eat them all first. they remind me of my childhood :)
My grandparents in Northern Maine had gooseberry bushes, and we used to eat a lot of gooseberry pie and cobbler! Yummy!
I wish I had my Grammy's recipes, but it seems like they'd work in any recipe for tart fruit-- like a tart cherry cobbler, or pie.
when I was little, my great grandma would take me out in the Indiana woods and pick gooseberries. Then we'd come in and listen to the radio and clean them.
baked in a flaky crust with a good helping of sugar and cinnamon, they are AWESOME!
man, I miss her.
I just brought home a box of these from the farmers' market last week! I had never even seen them before so I had to try them. I loved that the exterior 'shell' of the berry was quite tart and the seeds inside held nearly all of the sweetness. that's why the bigger ones are sweeter: the seeds are more developed. (you can also bite a little hole in one end and squeeze the seeds out in childish delight...)
does anyone know why they're called gooseberries?