Pitspone Farm offers small fruits that aren’t easily found elsewhere
By Faith Bahadurian
In a pleasant suburban neighborhood, each front yard presents a well-tended oasis of green grass, shrubbery, and flowers. But a peek into one back yard I recently visited reveals an exuberant collection of plantings that will produce berries and other small fruits destined for your dinner table in some of the area’s best restaurants.
And, if you like, you can purchase plants for your own garden and enjoy some of the unusual varieties that many area residents remember from another time and place, such as a childhood in a far-off region or country.
Figs, elderberries, alpine strawberries, currants, gooseberries, and exotics such as goumi and aronia, the cultivars Michael Brown grows at Pitspone Farm in Kendall Park are rarely seen in mainstream nurseries or grocery markets. He tests each variety for hardiness and yield in our own climate zone 7 before being made available for sale. He propagates his own plants, so offers more knowledge about optimal growing conditions than your typical nursery.
The name “Pitspone” is a play on the Hebrew word for very small, which describes his original growing space, and, even now, his backyard lot (carefully fenced in) is only a third of an acre — but anyone who has gardened will realize that is actually a lot of space for one person to take care of, especially taking into account that Brown also has a full-time career as a school librarian.
He and his young family lived for 10 years in Israel, where it’s common to grow olives and figs, and he became interested in berries and gardening back in the states when he was the “nature specialist” at his children’s camp. As a grower, he started out with fig trees, and one of his first clients was Jim Weaver chef/owner of Tre Piani restaurant, who bought fig trees from him. (I remember enjoying ripe figs when Mr. Weaver got married on the plaza outside his restaurant several years ago.)
From there, Mr. Brown branched out to heirloom tomatoes and berries, eventually honing in on the latter when unusual tomatoes became more commonplace. As a specialty grower, Brown always has to be looking for the next trendy item that will earn premium prices; right now he’s testing jujubes and working on white strawberries and haskaps (blue honeysuckle). Even the more typical berries he grows are specially chosen for their good flavor rather than their ability to be shipped thousands of miles.
He counts Princeton’s elements and mistral, and Kingston’s Eno Terra among his current clients, along with the Whole Earth Center. He also grows some gourmet produce for chefs, like pea shoots, basil, and leafy broccoli rabe (as opposed to flowering) — they’re quick to grow, and earn top dollar for small quantities, which is not the case for more typical vegetables, like green beans or zucchini, for instance.
Mr. Brown has recently started to sell to nurseries and to individual clients, who arrive from nearby states to get specialty items, such as one woman who wanted to make a traditional elderberry tincture she remembered from her native Poland.
It’s good to know that some of these wonderful old varieties of berries are still valued today, if only for the niche market. Gooseberries, for instance, used to be very popular, and in 19th-century England there were numerous gooseberry clubs holding competitions to see who could grow the biggest and best specimens. At least one of them, The Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society, lives on today.
If you want to order unusual frozen berries, visit www.nwwildfoods.com. Also, I notice they say that gooseberries are quite popular in India, so you might check an Indian Market for fresh ones. I do also think I’ve occasionally seen them in better area markets.
The recipes here are adapted from a cookbook by an Oregon-based writer, “The Berry Bible,” Janie Hibler, William Morrow (2004).
CITRUS-ELDERBERRY
SUMMER COOLER
Makes 1 1/2-2 quarts concentrate for up to 40 8-ounce servings. Note: The popularity of St. Germaine elderflower liqueur has sparked interest in backyard plants for both the blooms and the berries. F.B.
Juice of 4 large oranges
Juice of 1 large lemon
2 ounces tartaric acid (from a beer/wine making supply shop, or order online)
6 cups sugar
25 elderberry blossoms from a blue or black elderberry, rinsed.
Blend citrus juices with tartaric acid in a large bowl until tartaric acid is completely dissolved. Add 6 cups cold water, the sugar, and the blossoms, poking them down into the liquid. Cover and macerate for 24 hours in the refrigerator. Strain through cheesecloth of a fine strainer and discard the blossoms. Pour the cordial into bottles and serve diluted, 4 parts water to 1 part concentrate, over ice. It will keep for a month refrigerated, and up to 2 months frozen.
MACHE AND
BLUEBERRY SALAD
4 servings.
½ pound Mache or mesclun
1 large avocado, pitted, peeled, cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch slices
2 slices red onion, broken into rings
½ pint (1 cup) fresh blueberries, raspberries, or small-medium strawberries, rinsed and drained
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Pinch of coarse salt
Freshly ground pepper
Put the Mache, avocado, onion, and blueberries in a salad bowl. Whisk the rest of the ingredients together for dressing and pour over the salad, tossing gently. Serve immediately.
ALMOND GOOSEBERRY
CREAM PIE
6-8 servings. If you vacation in the Pacific Northwest, or happen to get lucky in a gourmet market, where I’ve occasionally seen gooseberries, be sure to have this recipe handy. F.B.<</i>br>
Have ready: Enough pie crust for a double crust pie, your own recipe or good quality purchased crust. Divide crust into two pieces, one, for top crust, slightly larger than the other.
2 pints (4 cups) fresh gooseberries, rinsed and drained, or frozen gooseberries thawed in a single layer on paper towels for 20 minutes
1 ¾ cups sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/8 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
2 large eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon pure almond extract
2 tablespoons milk
Preheat oven to 425 degrees; line a baking sheet with foil. Flour a clean surface and roll out a bottom crust 1/8 inch thick and 10 inches across for a 9-inch pie. Fit crust into pie pan, leaving 1-inch overhang.
Put berries in a bowl and toss with sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and almond extract. Pour filling into pastry-lined pan.
Roll out top crust 11 inches across, fold over rolling pin, and ease over filling. Tuck edge of top crust under edge of bottom crust and crimp. Brush top with milk (but skip edges) and sprinkle with remaining sugar. Cut slits to release steam and cover edges of pie with foil or pie shield.
Transfer pie to a baking sheet (to catch drips), and bake 35-40 minutes or until top is golden brown and filling is bubbly. (If berries were frozen, bake pie for 35 minutes at 400, then reduce to 375 and bake 15 more minutes.) Remove pie to wire rack to cool, and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.
Visits Pitspone Farm online at www.pitsponefarm.com. Note that visitors should make an appointment; contact information is on the site. Faith Bahadurian blogs at http://njspice.net (also Twitter @njspice).