Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Last summer, I got handed a load of blueberries. Now, Dorothea finds herself with a raspberry surplus. You can do a lot of the same things with both berries; the main difference is that blueberries are slightly alkaline, so you won’t need to add as much acid when substituting raspberries.

Jam is dead easy; equal weights of fruit and sugar, simmer until fruit loses structural integrity. (You could add in a little bit of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar if you’re feeling ambitious.) Handle with extreme care; pastry chefs call hot sugar “napalm” for a good reason. Make sure your pot, utensils, and containers are sterile; I use the dishwasher for this. The process is similar to raspberry sauce, which is lovely on Alisa’s cheesecake torte. (Warning–old links may be broken as a result of the change to WordPress.)

If it’s too hot or you’re too lazy to to cook, a simple salad is as follows: romaine lettuce, mandarin orange segments (drained, reserve liquid), toasted almonds or hazelnuts, thinly sliced green onion, and raspberries (or blueberries, or strawberries, or blackberries, or all of the above for that matter.) Dress with a combination of reserved liquid from the orange segments, hazelnut oil or olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

An even simpler salad would be mixed field greens, raspberries, and goat cheese with balsamic vinaigrette.

Also, homemade ice cream/sorbet isn’t difficult, and you don’t need an ice-cream freezer, just a blender or food processor. (Instead of churning the ice cream base, you partially freeze it in a shallow plastic Tupperware-type container, whiz it around in the countertop appliance of choice for a few seconds, and freeze it again for a couple of hours. Repeat 2-3 times, or until you’re satisfied with the texture. Granita is even easier; freeze the mixture solid, and scrape with a fork. ) It’s definitely worth the time and effort!

If you’re in the mood to experiment, raspberries go very nicely with peaches, white and/or dark chocolate, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, apricots, pears, lemons, oranges, kiwi fruit, brie, vanilla, coffee, balsamic vinegar, rhubarb, figs, mascarpone, chevre, and other berries. Though not all at once. (Baked brie with mixed berries is quite the nifty party dish; looks spectacular, very posh, and easy.) If you just can’t get enough, epicurious.com popped up over 400 recipes when I searched “raspberry,” most of them desserts.

Update: Almost forgot–raspberry lemonade.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2004 at 8:25 am and is filed under Tales from the Kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.