Day 215 -- Duck, Duck, Gooseberries!

Last year I bought my father a pair of gooseberry bushes for his garden and this year they're bearing fruit.  Gooseberry bushes can be found in nearly every English garden and they made their way across the Atlantic with the earliest settlers.  They are native to Europe, Africa and Asia but with the advent of commercially grown berries, gooseberries fell out of favor here in the U.S.

One of the reasons may be the fact that the bushes are covered in thorns.  Without heavy leather gloves, you can get seriously scratched just picking a single berry.  Of course, new thornless hybrids have been developed, but people just don't seem to plant them in the U.S.  My father tells of picking gooseberries at his German-immigrant grandfather's house.  They are one of the prettiest fruits, looking like little pink watermelons and tasting like . . .

I was talking to my sister about gooseberries and trying to describe what they tasted like, but I had no words since they taste like nothing I've every tasted before.  Some people say that gooseberries are a combination of the tastes of  grape, fig and apricot, if you can imagine that.  They have the texture of a very firm grape although they aren't as juicy and they have tiny seeds inside, much like the seeds in a kiwi, only smaller.

You can use gooseberries in any type of dish that you use cherries or blueberries -- pies, muffins, jams.  But unlike other berries, you can  also use them slightly unripe for a tart taste or fully ripened for a sweet taste.  They're nearly impossible to find in the stores, but I am going to see if I can find them at the farmer's market.  I'd like to make a gooseberry crumble.