Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Wineberries
Food writer Lindsey Nair
- lindsey.nair@roanoke.com | (540) 981-3343
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The only thing better than good food is a good bargain. Combine those two elements with a walk in some nearby woods, and that’s a banner reason to break out the rolling pin and bring on the butter.
I was biking up Bandy Road in Southeast Roanoke the other morning when I discovered, hugging the roadside like jewels, the first freebie fruits of the season:
The berries were in.
Not only did I take away a haul, thanks to the guy in the black truck who gave me a Kroger bag to put my pickings into, but I also had an idea for midsummer’s food column. I even bragged to my co-workers about the delicious wild red raspberries I planned to turn into pie and pour on my cereal.
Leave it to a bunch of journalists to steal the juice from your fruit. It turns out that the berries I’ve been picking up on Mill Mountain and along the Chestnut Ridge Loop for years aren’t raspberries at all: They’re wineberries.
Alas, that name belies the merits of this fruit, sounding more like a flavor of Mad Dog 20/20 than the delicate, sweet-sour berry it is.
“I know, I was disappointed, too,” said Hope Hollingsworth, the Roanoke City Market manager who thought she had bundles of raspberries on her Roanoke County property only to find out, via one of the longtime market vendors, that they were wineberries instead.
“The name makes them sound sort of plebeian and country, but actually I prefer them to raspberries; they’re much juicier,” she said.
Last year, New River Valley Bureau reporter Donna Alvis-Banks learned this lesson the hard way when she wrote a feature on the delicacy, mistakenly calling them raspberries. When the reader phone calls started pouring in, my pal had to write a dreaded correction — a fate worse than snakes in your wineberry patch.
It was an honest mistake. Wineberries are dead ringers for red raspberries, only they’re slightly more sour, a more vivid crimson color, and they taste more like black raspberries than red. “The taste is similar, but it’s actually a really different plant,” said Jeremy Pattison, a Virginia Tech small fruit specialist who grew up in Pennsylvania, where his family regularly made wineberry jam and jelly.
From early July to mid-August, you find them along roadsides and hiking trails, from myriad country roads to our very own Mill Mountain, where you’ll find a patch along the “car trail.”
As far as I can tell, the wineberry-crazed aren’t nearly as proprietary as the Morel mushroom-crazed, who jealously guard the locations of their secret picking patches. (Here’s a deal for the Morel-minded among you: I’ll trade two wineberry pies in exchange for a successful springtime Morel hunt, if anybody’s interested, and I promise not to disclose the spot.)
That’s because wineberries are considered to be an invasive crop, by the science types, anyway.
Knowing that one man’s flower is another man’s weed, Hollingsworth quickly got over her wineberry stigma. They pluck easily off the cane, “and they’re so beautiful, they almost look fake,” she said, adding that she prefers them plain or atop cereal.
Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times
A bunch of wineberries grows along a trail near the Roanoke Mountain campground.
I’ve turned them into pies and cobblers, the latter using a tried-and-true recipe from Gourmet (included below) that works well with other berries and with peaches, too.
I’m also including a recent O magazine recipe that a friend made for us on vacation, a scrumptious tartlet featuring goat cheese and tart fruit. Oprah’s version called for sliced plums, but I tested it using the wineberries, and the flavors melded even better; the lemon-zesty crust is especially fine.
We felt tres French eating our sophisticated crostata — you know, until somebody hauled out the hot dogs and Cheez Whiz the next night.
Stop where the parking lot’s full
I’m looking for suggestions for great road food restaurants, the mom and pop places you discover, usually while on your way somewhere else.
Last summer, our family was en route from Vermont to Roanoke when we took an Interstate 84 lunch break in Port Jervis, N.Y., and stumbled upon the Best Hamburger of Our Lives. Arlene and Tom’s Diner wowed us all with its signature Meanyburger, and our oldest son, who at 12-going-on-16 isn’t impressed by anything, is still raving about it. The waitress even let us recharge our laptop while we ate.
What’s your best road-food find? Is there a place you’ll drive out of your way to frequent when you’re on the road, a restaurant that conjures up memories of a rare family-vacation moment when even the picky eater didn’t complain?
E-mail me at beth.macy@roanoke.com, and I’ll report back, let’s hope before the next time you pack up the cooler and hit the road.
LEMON CROSTATA WITHBERRIES AND GOAT CHEESE
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 stick cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten
4 ounces fresh mild goat cheese
2 cups wineberries (or raspberries); the magazine’s recipe calls instead for 8 small ripe plums, pitted and quartered, or 10 fresh figs, trimmed of stems and halved lengthwise
1 tsp. cornstarch (only if using berries)
3 Tbsp. honey
In a large mixing bowl, beat flour, sugar and lemon zest at low speed until blended. Add butter and beat until texture resembles coarse meal. Drizzle in egg yolk and beat just until dough comes together. Gather into a ball and press into a disk; wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate one hour.
In the meantime, preheat oven to 375. Line a large cookie sheet with foil or parchment paper. Flour it lightly.
Flour a rolling pin, and roll dough into a 10-inch circle on the paper/foil. If dough cracks, press it back together with fingertips. Fold the edge of free-form crust inward 34 inch and press gently to form a rim. Evenly prick bottom with a fork. Refrigerate dough 15 more minutes. Bake until lightly golden, 12 to 15 minutes.
Crumble goat cheese evenly over bottom of crust. Gently stir cornstarch into fruit, then spoon it in dollops atop crust. (If using figs or plums, arrange slices in concentric circles over goat cheese.) Drizzle with 2 Tbsp. honey. Bake 15 more minutes. Remove from oven, drizzle with remaining honey, and place on a rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 8 servings.
— adapted from O Magazine
BERRY COBBLER
3 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/2 cup granulated sugar
6 cups picked-over berries (raspberries, wineberries, blueberries; any fruit works)
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
1/4 plus 2 Tbsp. boiling water
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream for accompaniment
In a large bowl, stir together cornstarch, sugar and berries with lemon juice. Toss until combined well and transfer it to a buttered 10-inch deep-dish pie plate.
In a bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and then add butter, blending until it resembles coarse meal. Add boiling water and stir the mixture until it just forms a dough.
Drop 14 cupfuls of dough over berry mixture and bake the cobbler on a baking sheet in the middle of a preheated 400-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until topping is golden and cooked through. Serve warm with ice cream.
— “The Best of Gourmet, Volume VI”
