Hello! And welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m glad you’ve stopped by!
This week, I’ve been doing a “market haul challenge.” On Saturday, between the farmer’s market and the grocery store, I spent $280.00 on groceries. This week, I’ve been sharing how I used everything from my haul.
Since we had leftovers last night, today I want to put the spotlight on a truly unique and under appreciated fruit: the humble ground (or husk) cherry:
Mr. Stone Soup and I first encountered husk cherries probably 20 years ago at our local farmer’s market. One of the farmers, Molly, grew heirloom beans, cabbages, squashes, greens and for a very short time in early fall, she carried “husk cherries.” We saw her every Saturday and she would suggestive sell us whatever she had that was new, in season and interesting, including, as it turned out, husk cherries. She encouraged us to eat them raw in salads and in place of pineapple on pizzas. She suggested we make jam and chutney with them. We tried them. We fell hard.
Molly moved on from our little market many years ago, and we didn’t see husk cherries again until about 10 years ago when we were traveling in Europe. We had found a lovely little resort in Bukenburg, Germany, where we quickly fell into the habit of coffee and cake in the afternoon. On one of these pleasant interludes, my slice of cake was garnished with ground cherries, and I went a little bananas. I hadn’t seen them in ages and I got pretty excited. So excited, in fact, that from then on, the adorable waiter brought my afternoon cake ringed with about a dozen husk cherries–I really, really, really wanted to take him home with me, but Mr. Stone Soup vetoed the idea 😉
Fast forward 10 years and this last weekend, I found husk cherries at the farmer’s market and again went a little bananas. The first thing I did was, well–eat a few of them–duh. But then I added them to salads alongside beets and red onions, such as this one:
Husk cherries are in the same family as the tomatillo, and appear fresh still in their paper wrapper. Unwrap them and they are a lovely golden color. They have an oily, slightly sticky coating on them that should be rinsed off. They are high in vitamins C and A and also are a good source of iron and niacin. They have a sweet, almost tropical flavor–think pineapples and mangoes–and have lots of tiny, crisp seeds.
I will be sharing a chutney I made with them to go with pork tenderloin later in the week; and I’ll be exploring more ways to use them for as long as they’re available at the market, so stay tuned!
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
