Edible Seasonals - Berry Frenzy
Check out Janie Hibler's information-rich book, The Berry Bible: With 175 Recipes Using Cultivated and Wild, Fresh and Frozen Berries (Morrow Cookbooks, 2004).
BERRY FRENZY
By Janie Hibler
For June-July 2006
Berry season in the Pacific Northwest always puts me in a frenzy, like a rabbit caught in a brier patch. I devour Oregon’s magnificent berries throughout the summer, but I’m equally adamant about stocking my freezer with fresh berries for winter use.
After living in Portland for more than 30 years, I’ve grown used to eating marionberry cobblers in the dead of winter and smelling the heady aroma of freshly baked raspberry muffins when the frost is on the pumpkins. I know fresh imported berries are available much of the year, but I won’t settle for inferior fruit when I can have our local berries — internationally recognized for their intense flavor and color — year-round.
The fertile Willamette Valley produces the greatest variety of berries in the world and the thought of gathering and freezing all of them causes me some angst. Over the years I’ve learned how to take charge of this daunting task to keep it from becoming a full-time job.
By the end of May I clean out my freezer, and make jam or syrup with last year’s berries. I dust off my over-the-sink colander, which I use for rinsing berries, and I stock up on assorted sizes of self-sealing freezer bags. I’m feeling better already.
The majority of our commercial strawberries ripen around June 1 and are finished by the end of the month. As soon as the season opens, I order three flats of my favorite strawberries — the lusciously sweet Hoods — from a local grower. (While there is something genuinely satisfying about going out and picking my own, as I’ve gotten older that doesn’t happen as often as it used to.)
At the strawberry fields I get a whiff of the berries’ fragrant aroma as soon as I step out of my car — always a good sign. I find my flats and a quick glance at their fresh-looking green caps tells me the strawberries have just been picked. Once home I rinse and dry the fruit, then freeze the berries topped but whole in bags labeled as “Hoods” so I know to use them judiciously. The following week I buy and freeze two more flats of strawberries — a mixture of Bentons and Totems. I’m feeling smug with the first berry crop tucked away in my freezer and checked off my list. It’s a good start.
By mid-June, sylvan blackberries, loganberries, blueberries, gooseberries, red currants and red raspberries are all ripe, and I’m trying not to panic. I focus on the red currants and loganberries because both are often hard to find. I always buy these berries when they first appear at the Portland Farmers’ Market. Red currants, with their tart flavor and high pectin content, are perfect partners with red raspberries for an intensely flavored ruby-red jam, and I love the tart loganberries mixed with other blackberries in cobblers. In both instances, combining the berries with other berries brings out the best flavors of all the fruit.
Blueberries have a long season and I freeze them later in the summer when they are sweeter. For now I track down gooseberries and red raspberries. I happily find the small, thick-skinned green culinary gooseberries and then, a few weeks later, the larger thin-skinned dessert gooseberry — the later are fat and a soft pink — and their lovely color will make a delightful gooseberry fool.
Over the weekend I discover giant, thumb-sized raspberries, as flavorful as they are big, at a roadside stand on the way to my cabin. I buy two pints for the weekend and eat half of them driving up the mountain. On Sunday, I stop at the stand on the way home and buy three flats of these splendid berries, which thrive in the rich alluvial soil and shallow water table found in the farmland around the Lewis River, as well as in the Willamette Valley.
Back in Portland I rinse and dry the berries and freeze them individually on a cookie sheet. Once frozen, I transfer the fruit to pint freezer bags and store them flat in the freezer to use for baking, sauces, preserves and drinks.
By July 10, the marionberries, boysenberries, black currants, black raspberries, Kotata and Waldo blackberries are ripe. It’s the height of Oregon’s berry season and I’m thinking of going to therapy — how can I keep up?
I crank it up a notch and in one weekend I buy two flats each of boysenberries and marionberries and a half flat of black currants. I freeze most of the berries but I can’t resist making a boysenberry-marionberry cobbler for dessert, and I stew a half-pint of black currants with a little sugar to use as a sauce for barbecue duck for weekend guests. I buy more marionberries and boysenberries later in the week to eat fresh.
It’s August now and I’m starting to feel so good I invite my therapist to dinner instead of visiting his office. I freeze a few quarts of Chester and Evergreen blackberries to supplement my marionberry supply, and I finally put up my last cultivar, blueberries. I keep out enough to make a fresh blueberry pie for dinner and I freeze the rest. When frozen, blueberries resemble miniature sapphire marbles, but they taste like pieces of candy. Each bite is slightly sweet with a bright burst of flavor. I put a bag in the front of the freezer for easy snacking, and I check the last of my berries off my list, at least until huckleberry season starts Labor Day weekend.
The pressure is finally off — I have enough berries stashed away in my freezer to get me through winter and to make berry Christmas gifts for friends and the entire neighborhood. For now, I’m simply going to relax in the cool shade of my deck with my well-earned blackberry martini. What better way to enjoy the fruits of my labor?
