Picking berries in the summer is a rite of passage, and doing so with family or a good friend is very special. In Harvard berries are plentiful at Carlson’s, Westward, and Doe Orchards, and in surrounding towns there are numerous roadside stands selling fresh berries. Don’t let summer pass by without enjoying freshly picked berries.
I look forward to picking berries each summer. It must be in my blood. When my mother was a child, her father gathered the family together for a drive in the country each summer Sunday afternoon to pick berries. They picked whatever was in season and would return home to turn the little delectables into delicious desserts and condiments.
In July I invited my good friend, Daria Eckert, to pick raspberries in my backyard. The berries are usually ripe the first week of July and last for about three weeks. But this year, despite the rain, we are still picking into the first week of August. I pick in the morning for breakfast, in the afternoon for a snack, and in the evening I toss a few in my glass of wine and save a handful or more to enjoy with ice cream. The afternoon Daria joined me to pick, we picked about two quarts apiece in less than 15 minutes. It was delightful. Once we had filled our containers, we continued to pick and eat the berries like kids at a candy store. Although it was time to go, the berries kept calling to us—pick me, just one more!
My favorite way to eat raspberries is off the bush, in a salad, or over ice cream. Nothing fancy, but very delicious.
Daria brought me a small container of gooseberries she had purchased from a farmstand in Berlin. Neither of us had eaten gooseberries before. I pulled out a berry cookbook (which we discovered Daria had given to me several years ago), and we were excited to find a gooseberry chutney recipe. As fond as I am of chutney, it was a perfect recipe for me to try.
American gooseberries are larger than blueberries and smaller than raspberries. European gooseberries can be more than an inch long. They can be round, oblong, or teardrop-shaped, and somewhat translucent, with a variety of color tones: green, white, yellow, shades of red from pink to purple to nearly black. The taste is distinctly sour, requiring a fair amount of sugar when cooked in pies, tarts, bread puddings, or sauces to be served with pork, lamb, or fish.
The recipe I chose was marinated lamb steaks with gooseberry chutney, only, as usual, I did not follow it directly but altered the spice to my own taste. The chutney can be served warm with the entrée. I also enjoy chutney with brie and crackers.