Recipe:Blueberries with Coriander & Lime
I have had a total about-face on blueberries. Since they revealed their secrets to me, I can't get enough.
So when Akasha called the other day to ask if I wanted to go pick blueberries with her in Gaviota, half an hour north of Santa Barbara, I leapt at the chance. One time many years ago, my mom and I picked wild blueberries on the “balds” or treeless mountaintops of Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina where head-high bushes fruited in a staggering abundance that couldn’t be exhausted by the best efforts of birds, rodents and larger mammals including us. I wanted some of that feeling again.
I also wanted to try a neat trick that Tom suggested in a comment on this blog. Tom is a college classmate of mine, a dear friend and a hell of a good cook whose first cookbook will be published early next year. In my earlier blueberry post, in which I lamented the flavor drain in cooked blueberries, Tom wrote:
I often view all these vexing issues through the lens of pie, rather than jam...I made a beautiful blueberry pie several weeks ago. The secret ingredient? Lime zest and juice, in place of the more usual lemon I use with virtually all other sweet fruit. It didn't taste limey at all, but had a wonderful, rounded, piqued flavor. It tasted emphatically and unambiguously of blueberry. And to be honest, the way-overpriced farmers market blueberries I used were a tad bland. Lime to the rescue.
Why not? If, as I learned in Oregon , gin can make blueberries sing, then lime doesn't seem like such a stretch. You may also remember that Linda the Great, Linda Ziedrich, mentioned to me that she'd once heard in Corvalis, Oregon, about a blueberry cordial flavored with coriander. I love coriander for its scent of dried lemon peel and rare woods and figured that lime and coriander would get along very well in a jam. It's not something I would have dreamt up on my own, but when you get there via small steps, it makes sense, right?
I drove north to pick.
The U-Pick farm Akasha found was called Restoration Oaks , a thousand-acre ranch along Hwy 101 that has 40 acres of blueberry fields, and she got there first with her husband Alan and friend Isaac. When the farm foreman came along to chat for a minute, I said I was surprised that he got enough winter chill in that area for blueberries, which I think of as a cool-climate crop. He explained that he grows Southern highbush blueberries that were developed in Florida, of all places, for warm-climate commercial production. The Southern highbush requires only 400 annual chilling hours below 40 degrees, and the microclimate at Restoration Oaks provides well more than that. In fact, this year's crop was delayed by a late hard freeze on March 25. Exactly 70 days later, though, the harvest began and the bushes will continue to yield, although ever more sparsely, into September. He grows a mix of varieties, including Bluecrisp, Misty, Saphire among others, to promote cross-pollenization and extend the harvest.
Akasha, Alan, Isaac and I each took a little zinc pail and wandered out into the rows of blueberry bushes. Do you realize how small a blueberry is when you toss it into a pail? There was much laughing and kvetching about how slow our progress was.
"Oh my god," said Akasha. "Now I know why fruit is so expensive."
"Ok that was fun," said Isaac after about 10 minutes, by which time he hadn't even covered the bottom of his pail. "We had the experience."
"The next time a farmer brings us fruit at the restaurant," said Alan, as we walked back to the farm stand to pay for our pitiful harvest, "I'm gonna give him more money."
I bought a few cartons to supplement my meager pickings and worked up this recipe for BLUEBERRIES WITH CORIANDER AND LIMEusing two pounds of fruit. You could safely double the amounts.
BLUEBERRIES WITH CORIANDER AND LIME
2 lbs blueberries
1 lb (2 heaping cups) sugar
zest from one small lime (ie, smaller than an egg), finely chopped & lime juice
1/2 to 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, finely ground
2 tablespoons vodka (it's optional, but I recommend it for the way that alcohol opens up "space" around the fruit to provide resonance and depth.)1 rinse and pick over the berries, then heat them in a pot with a tablespoon or more of water over gentle heat. simmer for five minutes until tender, then run through a food mill.
2 return puree to pot. add sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander and lime zest. bring to a boil, skim if necessary and reduce. with a 2-pound batch, you should reach the jell point in about 10 minutes if not before.
3 when you're near the jell point, add the vodka and juice from 1/2 a lime (it will make 1 tablespoon). return to a boil for a minute or two. now -- take a good tablespoon of the jam and cool it in the freezer for 90 seconds. taste and adjust the seasonings. I wound up adding about another 1/4 teaspoon coriander and a bit more lime juice until I was happy.
4 ladle into jars and seal. process in a hot-water bath for 10 minutes for half- or quarter-pints.
YIELD
2 pounds blueberries yielded 2 pints
1 x 8 oz
6 x 4 oz
NOTES
My objective was for these supplemental flavors to be subtle props for the blueberry taste, just barely perceptible. I'm really pleased with the results, but I'll admit that one might want the lime and especially the coriander to play more assertive supporting roles. Next time around that I'll add more to test the effect.
Reader Comments (6)
Awesome recipe, I've been adding a pinch of lemon zest to everything to use up my huge frozen supply of the stuff, it does seem to add a bit of zing without lasting the lemon. Hopefully next year of the lime tree gives I'll get to try that out.
another socal spot for u-pick blueberries is the Temecula Berry Company. Its like $5 a pint and boy were those good. Their picking season ended in June tho, so I'm happy to see theres another berry source within driving distance of Los Angeles. :)
Today I did some o'henry peaches in lavendar syrup, what a simple but elegant twist on the standard.
last nut not least, do you have any good plum recipes? I was driving thru Littlerock this weekend and got 2 boxes of peaches and 2 boxes worth of Friar plums to play around with, but I want to make something a little fancier then just plums and sugar ( not that its bad, but I have 50 pounds of plums to experiment with.
Yes, a good plum recipe would be wonderful! I have a nice plain-jane plum jam recipe, but long for something more...interesting.
Also, please don't forget to put tags on your blog entries; it makes the recipes so much easier to find. I know it's a bit time-consuming, but we do appreciate it!
There's a method to picking blueberries. Take along a length of cord long enough to go around your waist and tie. Run the cord through the bucket handle and tie the bucket to your waist. With both hands free, stick the bucket under a berry filled limb of the bush, cup your hands around a clump of berries and gently brush. The ripe berries will fall into your bucket. I picked 16 lbs of berries in an hour and a half this spring. They were running $2.20/lb., VA prices.
Love your style. Its blueberry season here now and I have ear-marked tomorrow to make Blueberry and Red Pepper Chutney, but I'm sure I can fit this in tomorrow too!
I have done as you suggested and added a little more corriander and lime juice and the taste is truly sublime. Thank you so much for sharing. One to pass down through the generations.