Plains Folk: Gooseberries, an acquired taste
By TOM ISERN
© Plains Folk
Garden catalogs are not supposed to be comic books, but I tell you, when you read the sections devoted to gooseberries, they are funny.
In my backyard I have a row of Pixwell gooseberry bushes. That was the name given to the variety released by North Dakota Agricultural College in 1932, because it was said the berries hung nicely beneath the branches, so the variety "picks well."
Well and good, but the descriptions go on to describe the berries as purple, or red, or some color other than green, which is what they are when they are fit to pick and eat.
Most comic is the assertion commonly made that the bushes, as one supplier says, are "practically thornfree." In fact they are every bit as spiny as the wild bushes I have picked from along the Cottonwood in Kansas or along the Cheyenne in North Dakota or anywhere else.
Gooseberries are an acquired taste. "Tangy" is the adjective many apply. They also are wonderfully sour, making them good to mix with less assertive berries or fruit.
I remember years ago making the acquaintance of Ola and Fred Pracht, who lived along the South Cottonwood in the Flint Hills of Kansas, and admiring the dozens of quarts of gooseberries they canned each year. What a job, I thought then - not just the picking and the canning, but more the laborious stemming.
This year we put up nine quarts at our house, and so, faintly, we are emulating the Prachts.
And enjoying the exploration of new uses for these little green jewels. Pie is the obvious thing, of course. I love a straight gooseberry pie, but people around me prefer a blend. A half-and-half, gooseberry-mulberry combination is a great one for the southern plains. The two together taste quite a bit like boysenberry. Gooseberry-juneberry (saskatoon in Canada) is a delight for the northern plains. The former we refer to as "mooseberry," the latter as "goonberry."
Gooseberries and juneberries or mulberries are a great marriage in a cobbler, too. "Speckled pup" is the name we've given to a cobbler wherein the berries rise to the top; it's a grandkid favorite.
From my boyhood in central Kansas I recall my grandmother making a summer dish she called icebox cake. This was a Jell-O concoction blended with whipped cream and nuts and fruit cocktail - thoroughly modern for its time. Reviving that dish for this year's 4th of July feast, I used canned gooseberries in lieu of fruit cocktail, scattered some purple juneberries across the top, and had a dish striking to both eye and palate.
Now we come to the provocative part. Some may recall that this column years ago introduced to the world the Lena Margarita, a blend of ice, rhubarb syrup, and tequila, which everyone makes fun of until they try it. Now, after putting the gooseberries into the icebox cake, I am left with a cup of gooseberry syrup, which gets my imagination going.
Gooseberry syrup in the blender, ice, and then what? Oh yes, a generous pour of black currant liquor. Perfect, and, you might say, tangy.
What next? Well, a big breakthrough for many fruit or berry ingredients comes when you cross over from sweet dishes to savory ones. So I have this recipe from a woman in California for gooseberry barbecued ribs, featuring a sauce of onion, garlic, soy, brown sugar, red pepper, some other stuff, and of course, gooseberries. Stay tuned, this is going to be good. I'll bet even Ola never tried this.
