English Peas, Spring Onions and Roasted Almonds

Just cooked English peas, sautéd spring onions and roasted, salted almonds are a delicious combination of tender sweet, sweet pungent, and crunchy just salty. You can set this side dish next to grilled fish or chicken or mashed potatoes and a roast. It's...

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Berries Category Archive

Planting Strawberries

If the idea of serving your own fresh-picked strawberries next summer sounds good, spring is the time to get your strawberries growing.

Strawberries are a perennial plant which means once you’ve got them in the ground you will have them for a two or three years to come.

There are two types of strawberries: June-bearing strawberries produce one crop per year in late spring or early summer, and everbearing or day-neutral strawberries fruit over a long season with harvest peaking in early summer and continuing unevenly through autumn.

Site. Strawberries prefer full sun and temperatures between 60-80ºF (16-27ºC). They grow best in growth zones 3-10. You can grow strawberries in light shade.

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Cranberries

Cranberries with roast pork, beef, chicken, or duck: now that’s tasty!

A chunky cranberry sauce takes only a minute or two to prepare and will add zest to the foods it’s paired with.

Add cranberries to salads, stuffings, cakes, muffins, pies, and puddings or make them into relishes and jellies.

Cranberries are crunchy and tart and almost always need to be sweetened with sugar. That means you can prepare cranberries specifically to your taste.

A traditional addition to the American Thanksgiving table, cranberries are easily frozen whole or turned into preserves and relishes which means they can come to the table any time of the year.

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Table Grape Varieties

The flavor of fresh grapes eaten out of hand is difficult to beat. But, if snacking is not enough, table grapes easily combine with other fruits: try grapes in fruit cups, fruit salads, and fruit compotes.

Combine grapes with avocado, grapefruit sections, melon balls, or strawberries.

Select table grapes that are fresh, plump, and bright. “Bloom” is the velvety powdery look that you see on fresh grapes. That’s good! Grapes that are too shiny have probably been handled just a bit too much.

Fresh-harvested grapes will have stems that are green and firm. These grapes will be the most flavorful. If the stems have turned brown or black, the grapes have begun to age.

There are dozens of varieties of table grapes to choose from: green-skinned, red-skinned, and blue-skinned, seeded and seedless.

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Table Grapes

White Grapes

Table grapes are most popular for eating out of hand, but they can also be added to fruit salads or compotes and desserts or used on the savory side added to green salads, sauces, curries, stews, and stuffings or served alongside poultry, fish and seafood, and wild game.

Grapes can be broadly categorized as either table grapes or wine grapes, though many grapes can be used as both.

There are several dozen varieties of table grapes. They can be categorized as green, red, or blue-black and as seeded or seedless. In some European countries green grapes are grouped as “white” grapes and red grapes are grouped as “black” grapes.

Green grapes are delicately flavored with both sweet and tart flavors. Red grapes are sweet with spicy undertones. Blue-black grapes can be sweet but often have tart skins.

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Grape Primer

Grapes can be broadly categorized as either table grapes or wine grapes, though many grapes can be used as both.

Table grapes are eaten out of hand or used in baking and cooking. Wine grapes are used for making wine. Grapes can also be used for making raisins or for producing grape juice.

After dividing grapes into table grapes and wine grapes, grapes can be further divided by color into white grapes and black grapes. White grapes—which are popularly called green grapes--include amber and yellow and green grapes, and black grapes—which are popularly called red grapes--include almost black, blue-purple, red, and pink blushed grapes.

After division by color, grapes can, once again, be divided into seeded and seedless grapes.

All of this is a lot of work for a berry fruit that is simply good eating or drinking.

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Raspberry Varieties

There are hundreds of varieties of raspberries.

Red raspberries are the most common.

Yellow or golden raspberries are a mutation of red raspberries.

Black raspberries--which are actually blue-black--are more firm and have more seeds than red or yellow raspberries.

Purple raspberries are crosses between black and red raspberries.

Everberaring varieties give an autumn crop as well as a summer crop.

OK, there’s your raspberry basics. The best lesson on raspberries is one you can teach yourself: which one do you like best?

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Raspberries

Raspberries are the most intensely flavored and delicate of berries.

You must eat them raw with cream.

If not, you must eat them raw with sugar or—if not--without sugar.

You might consider using raspberries in a flan or tart or in a jam or compote or jelly or syrup. But keep in mind that James Beard once noted that cooking raspberries—in anyway--should be a crime.

So you must eat raspberries raw--with cream.

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Strawberry

Strawberries and cream. Strawberries shortcake. Strawberries just by themselves.

Yummmy!

The peak season for flavorful, naturally sweet strawberries is late spring.

Local strawberries at the peak of their natural season are most likely to be the tastiest strawberries you will eat all year.

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Blueberries

Blueberries on cereal. Blueberries with cream and sugar. Blueberries on vanilla ice cream. A handful of blueberries.

Try this: Place fresh, chilled blueberries in a merinque shell and top with whipped cream.

Yum!

The last of this year’s fresh, local blueberries will be available at the farm market during the next couple of weeks—if you live in northern climes.

Blueberry season in the north stretches from June through September. (The season in the south is much shorter—May through June—and done for this year.)

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