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Cranberries - intriguing, beautiful, tasty but perhaps not environmentally sound


"They roast beautifully, pickle perfectly. They bring the right amount of sweet and sour to a bake as they do to a green leaf. And they’re just what you want with something creamy – be it avocado, goat’s cheese or buttercream."

Dale Berning Sawa

The Guardian

David bought a big bag of cranberries the other day because they were on a special. There were a number of things that intrigued me about cranberries so I thought I would do a post on them. Because they're pretty popular aren't they, not just on their own - you find them in all sorts of cereal and biscuity products as well as drinks and yoghurts and even capsules from Blackmores and Cenovis.

So what intrigued me? Well you don't seem to be able to get fresh cranberries here - or frozen for that matter. I have just done a quick look at Coles online and although there are lots of cranberry products and dried cranberries there are no frozen ones. They are not grown here which I sort of understand as they are a bog plant and I'm not aware of Australia having any bogs, although Aussie farmers are a pretty innovative bunch. I see there is one grower in England who is trying out different methods of growing them. He seemed to be in a greenhouse, so maybe they will do that here. In the meantime though I think most are grown in America - in the New England states and in Washington and Oregon where they are grown on an industrial scale. My packet of dried cranberries simply said they were packed in Australia from imported products, but I do not know from where they were imported. I saw some pictures (one below) of some Indian looking gentlemen doing the harvesting, so maybe they are grown in India too.

"Cranberries are among the good fruits which grow by nature in what would otherwise be waste land - for cranberries it is acid sandy bog, waste land and water. They were a gift, to be had for the picking, and what made the New Englanders value them so much, in their first straitened existence, was that cranberries keep fresh so long - from autumn into winter - because of their waxy skin." Jane Grigson

And I think this is the reason that the Thanksgiving turkey is always accompanied by cranberry sauce.

The plant, which is native to America - well Europe too but a different variety - it's the American one which is now grown commercially I think - is a low vine kind of plant that scrambles across boggy acidic, sandy soil. Wikipedia has a detailed entry on cranberries and this is how it describes the making of the beds in which the berries are grown.

"Today's cranberry beds are constructed in upland areas with a shallow water table. The topsoil is scraped off to form dykes around the bed perimeter. Clean sand is hauled in and spread to a depth of four to eight inches (10 to 20 centimeters). The surface is laser leveled flat to provide even drainage."

When the berries are ready for harvest the beds are flooded enough for the berries, still attached to the plants, to float - they have tiny air bubbles in the fruit. Then a harvester drives through to detach the berries that then float to the surface.

More water is added, the berries are corralled and pumped out, filtering out the leaves and twigs in the process.

This is the bit that intrigued me, because I think I saw an Ocean Spray ad that showed this. I thought it was just them being whimsical. I remember thinking that you couldn't grow berries in water. Where was the plant? But it does lead to you thinking that the berry plants do grow in water, which I now know they don't.

Ocean Spray - I think the largest company - has a video that is worth a look, in spite of the fact that it is a marketing exercise and full of warm and fuzzy bits about how I'm just a farmer doing what my granddad did. Ignore them and watch how it's done.

You can also dry harvest the fruit and apparently this is done to produce the top quality fruit as it is less damaging to the fruit. This machine is bit like a combine harvester thing - machine with a rake that rakes the berries off the plants.

And yes, as you might think, all that water is a problem. Not because there isn't any water. In many instances it is brought in fresh from surrounding rivers and lakes and when finished with pumped back in. The problem being of course that the water now contains lots of chemicals (pesticides and fertilisers. I don't know whether this is being remedied. I gather the water being pumped out could be pumped into reservoirs for reusing. So the greenies would tell you to buy organic.

And another fun fact. They are also known as bounce berries because you test their ripeness by bouncing them! If they bounce, they are ripe.

As to nutrition and health claims. I saw that it's supposed to be good for urinary tract infections - but no real proof as yet. There are various other claims as well - also unproven. And yes it's got vitamin C and other vitamins and minerals as well, but not in vast quantities. So, good but not especially so.

As to their taste - well sharp and versatile and the wild cranberries are even sharper than the cultivated ones. I checked recipes in my American Heritage Cookbook and also from various English cooks but found, unsurprisingly really that they almost all used fresh cranberries - or cranberry sauce. They seem to be able to get fresh ones in England - or at least frozen ones. So I had a look for some Australian recipes and found a really interesting bunch - in lots of ways some of them were more innovative than the English and Americans. Here's a sample but a quick search in Google will find you many more usual ones - for cakes and pies and things - basically where you would normally use raisins and sultanas. You can substitute dried for fresh but you need to soak them first, but virtually all of the Australian recipes used dried ones anyway.

I had to include this one after having 'done' cauliflower yesterday. Not that this is cauliflower and pasta - just a salad. And I have to say there are lots of cauliflower salad recipes out there - and several will probably have cranberries in them too. The tartness of the cranberries is an excellent foil for the bland cauliflower.

This 'bread' is damper style and also has figs and Stilton cheese in it, which would be interesting. It's apparently good toasted as well.

Duck with apples and cranberries - SBS

This is a Polish dish. The apple and cranberry mixture is served alongside the duck. It's not really part of the duck cooking itself.

Homemade Gourmet Crackers - Recipe Tin Eats

Now this I thought I might try next time I have a group of people here who are faced with a cheese platter. You make the loaf, freeze it, slice it and cook again to crisp it off. The author maintained it was much better than the gourmet crackers she had seen in Woolworths and Coles. And much cheaper too. They'd certainly look impressive I thought. It's a really good site. The recipe has all sorts of interesting things in it, there are helpful pictures and a video too. An alternative to almond bread or biscotti. Even a nutritional value table.

Stilton again. It looks pretty yummy.

There are lots of recipes for home-made cranberry sauce. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and co. add pears, others add oranges, with others it's just cranberries. Cranberries are very high in pectin and so there is no danger of it not setting. In fact the danger is it will be too solid - so some recommend adding some wine which must prevent this in some way.

Well there you have cranberries. I'm sure there are lots more recipes for cakes and muffins and pies, but I haven't added them here.

Very unique way of growing and harvesting something though. Hope they solve those environmental problems.

"The Indians and English use them much, boiling them with Sugar for Sauce to eat with their Meat, and it is a delicate Sauce." John Josselyn, 1663

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