Cerise de terre

[VivreManger]

Bit by bit I am going through the last of the purchases from last summer's visit to isle d'Orleans. Just opened is a jar of confiture de cerise de terre et sucre. I had tasted them raw last summer and thought they were simpy exceptionally sweet cherry tomatoes. Boiled and sweetened with sugar to make a jam, they now taste like and have the color of mirabelle plums, my favorite, particularly on the delicate crust of a French tarte.

Can anyone inform us more about this product of the Quebec terroire?

[carswell]

Here's a description from Palmer and Fowler's Fieldbook of Natural History:

Ground Cherry

Physalis heterophylla

Height to 3 ft. Erect or sprawling, with erect tips. Stem rather sticky and hairy, weak and green, arising from a slender, long, underground rootstock, branching or unbranched. Leaves alternate, to 4 in. or more long, coarsely but shallowly and bluntly toothed at margin, with veins joined inside the leaf margin.

Native of North America. Found on rich garden soil or similar places from New Brunswick to Florida, west to Texas, Colorado, and Saskatchewan. Closely related species extend range to other continents with 30 in the United States, 2 in Europe, 6 in India and Australia and others in South America.

Flowers borne singly in axils of leaves, greenish-yellow with a brown or bluish center, to nearly 1 in. across, with calyx not half petal length. In fruit calyx is inflated to enclose completely and loosely the yellow, many seeded berry.

Known as "husk tomatoes," the members of this genus are eaten raw, preserved, or cooked. Some are considered of enough importance to be cultivated for sale in markets or for home consumption. Unless ripe, they may have a strong unpleasant taste, but ripe and cooked properly, they closely resemble tomatoes.

Domestic animals have been poisoned by eating large amounts of the tops or unripe fruits. Vegetation normally so distasteful that poisoning only rarely occurs. The South American P. peruviana, with larger tipped, nonsticky leaves is most commonly cultivated. Related P. alkekengi is known as Chinese lantern plant and winter cherry. Orange fruits are cut late in season for indoors as decoration. "Fruits" are really swollen calyxes of the white flowers which open in summer.

In Quebec, ground cherries are traditionally used to make jam and pies. They're also popular with chefs of the never-a-dull-moment variety, who use them in sauces (e.g. cream sauce for salmon) and salsas, a not-so-oblique reference to their relative, tomatillos (P. ixocarpa). P. peruviana is popularly known as the cape gooseberry.

The SAQ sells a couple of ground cherry liqueurs (Liqu'Or, Amour en Cage) and mistelles (Passoion Dorée Enflamée). Amour en Cage, the only one I've tasted, is way sweet and, while tasty enough, doesn't catch the soul of the fruit the way framboise, poire williams, mirabelle or even a good applejack does (of course, those are brandies, not liqueurs). If I owned a bottle, I'd use it for sauces and desserts.

Googling "ground cherries" or "cerises de terre" will turn up more than a few recipes.

Edited June 24, 2004 by carswell (log)

[Lesley C]

I think it's also called a Cape Gooseberry.

I think they're very pretty but -- generally -- pretty tasteless. AND very nineties .

[cook-em-all]

AND very nineties  .

Everything that is old is new again.

The good thing from a Chef's point of view, they are good for food cost, look good, fairly exotic for the average joe, stores relatively well(espicially compared to berries).

As a far as flavour, it is like rhubarb it needs help.

[riboflavinjoe]

Geez, havent you heard, guys? Old is the new new.

[identifiler]

old is new again, white pants are back and I am the new Lou Reed (or the old David Bowie)... arrrgghh I'm all mixed up.

Cerise de terre are very common in quebec, you can buy them almost everywhere now. They are very easy to grow. SO easy that my organic farmer keeps giving us a bag and I keep sending it back to him to tell him to use his land for better value.

Cerise de terre does have it's place in jam and pies and others. All alone, they are fairly tasteless, in restauarants, many experience the taste of the 100 year old cerise de terre that is unrapped for the eye (and only the eye). And it has been a nice companion to those gross corporate buffet where saturated oils are 90% of the desserts.

The problem is with the skin that covers it, it tends to pick up any humidity and transfers to the cherry. So when fresh and ripe, it is a lovely ingredient, when old and badly used it is a disliked product (for me anyways). Let me know if you want to grow them, one plant will give you a good basket. Think of them as incredibly similar to green tomatilloes, they grow in a husk and have this soapy like texture on the skin. In fact, they are similar to tomatilloes in the fact that alone, they are tasteless but no one can call a salsa real without any boiled tomatilloes.

[Thesorus]

I love groundcherries, and when they are in season, I always make jams ...

simple recipe, no measurement, groundcherries, lemon slices, sugar, and either rosemary or cracked pepper.

This is tonight's batch ...