Wineberry Pie

As promised, I give you some food porn from the first successful wineberry project of the year. I didn't record as much as I had hoped because I was too busy making/eating the pie, but there we go.

Wineberry Pie, people! ITS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVARRR. It is basically straight up, XXX, hard-core flavor porn. Your taste buds will need to be censored afterwards.

Hyperbole-lacking version: basically its like a sour cherry pie with more zing.

If this pie was a chick she'd be BABEraham Lincoln.

Okay so if you want a recipe, I sorta threw one together from some old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook recipes for cherry pie and for raspberry pie. Most berry pies call for sugar and cornstarch to be mixed in with a bunch of berries and then placed into a pie shell; when the pie cooks, the sugar and cornstarch thickens with the juices of the berries. These pies are juicy and light. If you want a gooey pie like you'll get with a store-bought cherry pie, you need to make additional pie filling.  I prefer the gooey pies, but they do require a little bit more work and berries.

I apologize for any lack of exact measures if I don't have exact measures.

(This particular recipe needs about 2 to 2 1/2 lbs of berries.)

PREHEAT OVEN TO 375F


Pie Crust

Use whatever recipe you want for a basic flaky pie crust, but most of them look the same. In general, a pie crust is made by cutting cold lard or shortening into all-purpose flour mixed with some salt until the fat from the shortening is evenly distributed. Use a pastry cutter or knife for this process and not your fingers. You should get a crumbly texture at that point; most recipes say to stop mixing once the flour clumps reach a pea-like consistency. Then moisture must be introduced to the lard-flour mix - a few tablespoons of ice water tossed into the mixture with a fork should do the trick. Once everything looks right, you use a rolling pin to get the dough flat and in shape.

a friend of mine assisting in the dough rolling

Remember to use cold shortening or lard instead of butter and limit the amount that your hands touch the dough. If you use butter instead of lard/shortening, the dough will act like a shortbread instead of a pie crust, and the oils from your skin can make the crust chewy instead of flaky.


Wineberry Filling

The Goo

1 cup wineberry juice (made from crushing around 1 lb of wineberries and straining the juice for seeds)
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
dash of salt

Combine these ingredients in a small pot or saucepan and heat it up; the recipe I used called for medium heat but I put my stove on medium-high. Stir the mixture frequently. The cornstarch and sugar will thicken with the jucie and turn into a goo; once it gets to that point, remove from heat and stir for another minute. Taste and see if it is to your liking. It may be rather sweet at this point, but once the pie gets cooked with more berries, the sweetness should give way to a zing.

remember to wash off your berries before use!

early stages of goo preparation

Putting it all together

While still warm, fold your goo in with around 1+ lb of fresh wineberries until everything looks evenly mixed. Pour the filling into a 9-inch pie pan line with pie crust dough. If you are using a second crust on top, make sure to cut vents into the top. (We had extra dough from our bottom layer so we took the Abraham Lincoln cookie cutter of ours and some hearts and threw those shapes on top.)

the goo mixed in with a lb of fresh berries to make the complete filling. *drool*

Cover the edges of the pie with aluminum foil and cook for 25 minutes. After that, remove the aluminum foil and cook for another 25 to 30 minutes or until the filling is bubbling over and the crust looks golden brown, and/or you can hear a choir of angels.

Seriously, you guys, you have never tasted until you have tasted this pie.

I am not kidding.

The Wineberries are Here

So guys, life is hectic right now. Life is a little screwy, a little scary, a little bit too much to handle.

But screw all that, Eeyore, because the mother effing wineberries are here.

What are wineberries, you say?!

These beautiful things.

This is what we call hunter-gatherer porn.

Wineberries, AKA Japanese Wineberries, are a wild-growing relative of the raspberry that taste like success and harmony with the universe. The vines can grow up to nine feet in the proper location and have delicate red spines. They grow best in partial sun. Unlike the raspberry, wineberries are brighter, shinier, and have hard seeds. The season for wineberries is criminally short, a few weeks between late June and early July, sometimes mid-July. The wineberry is an invasive species to the eastern States, but pretty much nobody complains or cares about that, because these things are more delicious than any hyperbole the best English professors can come up with.

Okay, seriously, if you want a single-word description of what they taste like, I'd have to say HOLYCOWLEVELRAAAAUUGHSFKDGJHEWAUIDSKJHDF "Jazzy."

We have a huge group of vines that are growing very enthusiastically in an old compost pile in full/partial sun. For the past week I've been picking from them, and guys, this year is a freakin BUMPER CROP. I currently have 2 lbs of berries picked over the course of 4 days and tomorrow I am going to be baking a pie out of it. We probably still have another 2-4 lbs of berries coming in!

Anyway, if you have some wineberries in your area, I have suggestions from 11+ years of berry picking!

Wear jeans and boots.

Most wineberry plants will be found in the woods or along the perimeter of woods, as they grow best in partial shade. Therefore, in order to get the most bang for your buck, you're going to want to do some adventuring. Long pants and boots are great protection from the plants' spines and from ticks/mosquitos/poison ivy.

Smaller berries = tarter berries

Small, compact berries are okay, but most tend to be tarter in flavor and have a smaller flesh-to-seed ratio than bigger, plumper berries - even when super ripe!

Darker berries = sweeter berries

Especially true for berries of a large size, letting the berries ripen to a very dark red ensures that they will be the sweetest they possibly can. However, there's a fine line between a sweet wineberry and a wineberry that's lost all of its jazz. The best berries, in my opinion, still have some brightness to them.

Loose berries versus compact berries

Wineberries appear to have a scale of compactness. The most compact berries tend to be smaller and are always tarter, and usually found where the plants have competition with grasses. The average berry has a good level of plumpness and holding-together-ness. Some berries have massive levels of flesh around the seeds, and these do not hold together very well at all. These berries are almost always sweet, but they do not preserve very well and often get squished in your fingers when you pick them. I don't personally pick these berries for that reason, but depending on your taste, you may like them.

Do not be afraid of vegetation

On especially bountiful plants, many of the best groups of berries are found deep within a maze of thorny shoots and other vines/plants. You may have to step on some of the neighboring plants and move some thorny vegetation in order to maximize your harvest. They'll grow back, I promise.

Do not disturb the spiders

Wineberries attract certain nymphs that may or may not be related to aphids. When picking the berries you'll see alot of them - don't be afraid, they are easily crushed or flicked off. Many spiders flock to larger plant sites because of the abundance of these squishy guys. I always take care not to rip up or disturb a spider's web for this reason. The plants in our yard have few pests because there are numerous spiders and daddy longlegs chillin out in their leaves.

...Although it's totally cool to freak the f**k out if one of those gigantic garden spiders from hell decided to make its human-sized web around the berries you've mentally claimed.

SATAN.

Be careful with stinkbugs

Wineberries are also a favorite of the dreaded stinkbug. When you see a group of berries with a stinkbug around it, quickly flick the bug off and inspect the odor of the berries. If any of them have the strong scent of stinkbug stank on them, DO NOT use them for ANYTHING. You will probably never get the flavor out.

Refrigerating

A general rule of thumb with everything that you put in your belly is that the fresher it is, the better. Wineberries can be refrigerated for up to three days, but I don't suggest much past that. The berries begin to get mushy and the bold zing that they once had starts to be replaced with the flavor of refrigerator. Nobody wants to eat refrigerator.

So yeah, that's all I got right now for the wineberries. Stay tuned for food porn when I start making stuff out of my pounds and pounds of berries!