I received a well established gooseberry bush from my neighbor. Now that we have it planted I am wondering if anyone else grows gooseberries and if so do you like them? Any suggestions as to what types of cooking you do with them would be very much appreciated.Thanks for your help. Linda

-- Linda Foster (rcfam@csinet.net), April 19, 2001

Answers

Gooseberries are wonderful! Gooseberry jam is the very best in the world---tart/sweet and full of flavor. And gooseberries make a darn good pie, too.

Just don't let them get overripe---pick when they've colored up a bit but are still firm. When they get soft they loose flavor.

-- Julia (charmer24@juno.com), April 19, 2001.

What do you do with gooseberries? Well you make a cobbler, put about a ton of sugar in it, take a bite make a funny face and say through puckered lips "Needs sugar" but man is it good

-- grant (organicgrange@yahoo.com), April 19, 2001.

You can do anything with gooseberries that you would do with currants... The jelly is heavenly, and they make a good pie mixed with some sweeter fruits. But watch out for those thorns!!!! (If you do not wash them, you can freeze them... Just clean before use.)

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), April 19, 2001.

Gooseberries are a great cold weather plant that can stand shade; in fact, prefers some. They will start a new plant if you bend a branch down to the soil and put a rock on it to hold the stem to the soil so it can grow roots. Also,you can cut a branch, dip in rootone (use gloves, rootone is carcinogenic on skin) and slip into moist soil. I planted 15 new bushes last night in my forest garden that way. This is one of the plants that makes a good no-care perennial backbone for easy food production. Gooseberries are kind of rare now because they were eradicated on the east coast when the white pine was a big economic crop. The gooseberry and white pine had a mutual pest called the white pine blister rust which was devastating white pines.

Its good to see gooseberries making a comeback; in Alaska they were and are a pioneer staple.

-- seraphima (djones@kodiak.alaska.edu), April 19, 2001.

Gooseberries make pretty good wine.

-- Paul (hoyt@egyptian.net), April 20, 2001.

Hi. Linda. Do you have kids? If you do they will love them. My parents had a bush when I was young and that was one of our chores to go and pick a bowl of gooseberries for our mom. Well she never really got to make anything out of them because we always would eat too many of them when we were picking them so by the time that we went back into the house with the bowl it was always only half full. I bought a small bush about 3 years ago and it started to produce the first year that I had it. My bush has gotten big now and our boys just love them. I never really get to make anything out of our either because the boys usually eat them up as fast as they can ripen. Good luck with your bush and enjoy.

-- Londa (maewag@hotmail.com), April 20, 2001.

A lovely if rather fattening gooseberry crumble cake is easy to make and lovely to eat hot or cold. You need a tallish cake tin with a loose bottom to bake it in. (I use the one I make Christmas cake in.) I have no proper recipe as I saw it in a newspaper and make it from memory. You need a mixing of a plain Victoria sponge cake made with 2 eggs nad the same weight of those eggs in self raising flour, sugar and margarine. Grease the tin well and put the sponge cake mixture into the bottom. I try to raise it slightly round the sides. Cover the sponge with a single layer of washed and dry gooseberries, leaving a slight margin round the outside next to the tin. Cover that with crumble mixture made with equal amounts of margarine and sugar and twice that amount of flour. Cook in an oven the same heat as you'd bake a cake and it's ready in about 40 to 50 minutes. It's lovely with cream or just ordinary milk poured over. Any spare crumble mixture can be saved in the fridge for a few days and can be used to make gooseberry crumble without the cake below the fruit. My sister has a recipe for gooseberry chutney which I seem to remember was rather good with cheese or cold meat.

-- Lizz Cook (lizzcook@hotmail.com), April 22, 2001.

Had some wonderful gooseberry jam I bought at Amana Colonies. I'm putting in my second bush this year and hope to get enough off my original plant to do something with this year. We have a serious grasshopper problem here but they seem to leave the gooseberry alone & that's why I'm going for more. DW in Colorado

-- DW (djwallace@ctos.com), April 22, 2001.

Hi Linda,

I have a recipe for spiced gooseberries. My Great Aunt used to make this recipe each year & my Mother says that they were the best pickle etc. that she has ever eaten. They used to serve it for supper when they would have leftovers (meat & fried potatoes). She always used the red gooseberries. The recipe I got from her daughter was rather sketchy. But here goes:

8 qts. berries 1 pt. of vinegar 1 oz. whole cinnamon ground fine 5 lbs. of sugar white 2 tsp nutmeg (my cousin said she didn't think that her Mom put the nutmeg in as they didn't like it) Mix all of the ingredients together in a stainless steel or enamel pot that has a thick bottom. cook over low heat until the consistency of marmalade. Then put in sealer jars. ENJOY!!!!!!!!

Good luck Jan Sears

-- Jan Sears (jcsears@magma.ca), April 23, 2001.