Mulling About Mulberries

[maggiethecat]

I've been informed that I have access to a river, a lake, an ocean of mulberries. That's the good part.

I don't have clue one about mulberries --except that they stain your sidewalk--that's the bad part. I've never tasted a mulberry, and epicurious and Martha Stewart and eGRA have all come up short. Are mulberries the fruit equivalent of pigeons -- sturdy, boring and messy?

I like free fruit: Mulberry Mavens, please weigh in.

[Gifted Gourmet]

This page describes in (way too) great detail the black mulberry, medicinal uses, and has some recipes, albeit a bit vague ...one of them is about Mulberry Jam ...source

Yet another source says:

Mulberry   Morus nigra

Description: A deep purple, shiny juicy fruit.

Thought to be originally native to Persia (Iran), first introduced to Britain in the 14th century where the leaves of the tree were used to feed silk worms.

Use: Remove the stem and rinse in a colander, drain well . Use fresh in fruit salads cream or ice cream. Can be cooked in pies and tarts. Can be pureed and added to ice cream, sorbets and drinks. Can be used to make jams and preserves

The Foody.com

a plethora of mulberry recipes

Sweet-Hot Mulberry Jam

Chicken with Chipotle-Mulberry Sauce

Grilled Lamb Chops with Mulberry Salsa

Country Cobbler

Mulberry Ice Cream

Mulberry Wine .. recipe and discussion

another variation on Mulberry wine

A beginning ...

[maggiethecat]

Melissa, you are The Woman. Thanks for the great start.

I know someone on eGullet has done mulberry purple haze. Are they really tasty enough to use in a cobbler or a pie?

[Gifted Gourmet]

Are they really tasty enough to use in a cobbler or a pie?

←

et voila! Mulberry Pie which is best topped with creamy vanilla ice cream ...

[mukki]

The LA Times had a nice article about black, or Persian, mulberries last year. It included recipes for apricot mulberry crisp and mulberry fig tart and mentioned that Suzanne Goin of Lucques serves black mulberries in a chilled bowl with a pitcher of heavy cream or creme fraiche. I know that Boule, a patisserie here in LA, makes mulberry tarts. A good way of preserving them is to spread them in a single layer on a towel-lined cookie sheet and freeze them.

I tried them for the first time at a farmer's market and promptly went out and bought a tree (which has about 32 mulberries on it this year).

They have a unique sweet-tart taste and are very juicy and highly perishable. It's probably my favorite berry. Chez Panisse Fruits has a whole chapter on them, with recipes for mulberry ice cream (their best flavor, according to the intro), and mulberry sherbert. I would think mulberry juice would be delicious.

Hilary

Edited to add that I assume you have access to black mulberries. The white and red mulberries are supposedly inferior.

Edited June 17, 2006 by mukki (log)

[Miriam Kresh]

The mulberry wine on Jack Keller's site is delicious - made some 2 years ago and it's going to be officially mature come October. If I had access to 3 kg. of mulberries every year, I'd make that wine every year. But the friends who owned the tree moved awy...

Mulberry sorbet is very good (you do need to strain out the seeds after pureeing). And as mukki noted, black are best; richer and more winelike than the others.

Miriam

[jsolomon]

Think sweeter, milder blackberries.

[Adam Balic]

Melissa, you are The Woman. Thanks for the great start.

I know someone on eGullet has done mulberry purple haze. Are they really tasty enough to use in a cobbler or a pie?

←

Maggie - there are several types, but I am assuming that they are from the Black Mulberry tree (which has the best tasting fruit), not the White Mulberry. My grandparents have a tree, I use to make myself sick with them as a kid I ate so many.

I like them much more the blackberries, which I think are rather pointless (unless in jam). They don't even taste very similar to blackberries, more of a rich wine flavour. Infact, if you drink a glass of Wynns Coonawarra black label Cab. Sav., this always reminds me of the flavour of mulberries.

They make excellent preserves and would be great in a fool or a cobbler etc. When I was a kid I would swish them up and mix the juice with soda water and ice.

[chickenlady]

I've been informed that I have access to a river, a lake,  an ocean of mulberries. That's the good part.

I don't have clue one about mulberries  --except that they stain your sidewalk--that's the bad part. I've never tasted a mulberry, and epicurious and Martha Stewart and eGRA have all come up short.  Are mulberries the fruit equivalent of pigeons -- sturdy, boring  and messy? 

I like free fruit: Mulberry Mavens, please weigh in.

←

So did you take the mulberries? What did you do with them?

Last weekend we were visiting some friends and they were talking about this strange tree in their yard. Looks like Cousin It, but they had no idea what it was. My husband was practically beside himself with joy--its a mulberry!!! Four adults and four toddlers hovered around the tree for nearly 30 minutes snatching the ripe berries and jamming them in our mouths as fast as possible. Unfortunately, these friends are moving downstate this weekend, so the joy with our find has been short-lived.

I am now obsessed with growing my own mulberry tree.

[Angela Alaimo]

The best way to eat mulberries:

1) Stand under tree--go barefoot if you are wish to avoild purple-soled shoes.

2) Fill at least one hand with mulberries.

3) Stuff entire contents of hand(s) into mouth.

4) Repeat.

[ludja]

Your thread reminded me of a recipe given in an article in Saveur a few years back for a mulberry tart. It was gorgeous looking. I looked on the Saveur website and it is one of the recipes they have posted here:

click

I would think they would make a great syrup as well that could be served with pancakes or waffles, over ice cream or in club soda for a drink.

[JSD]

We used to pick them along the river in the Texas Hill Country, and put them on ice cream.

I just found out the sapling I've been trying to kill for several years is a mulberry. It's in a bad spot in my yard, and just today I picked leaves for my friend who has silk worms, but no mulberry tree.

[mizducky]

Y'know, I grew up in a house with not one but two huge mulberry trees on its property, and it never once occurred to me to try eating them. Perhaps our appetites were put off by the smelly staining fermented mess of windfall berries these trees dropped on our yard every year--especially since we kids sometimes got drafted to rake/sweep the crap up.

The birds absolutely adored the berries, though--I think I've already related elsewhere on eGullet the spectacle we once saw when the bluejays got into the fermented windfall mulberries and began flapping about and crashing and making a huge amount of racket. If bluejays are the fratboys of the avian world, then bluejays on fermented mulberries are the *drunken* fratboys of that world.

However, as a teenager I did once get a taste of this fermented mulberry beverage created by an older gentlmen who was a friend of my Russian-emigre piano teacher. I was given to understand this was a traditional brew from this fellow's home region in the Ukraine. It was kinda thick and foamy, like a mead, and frankly I didn't find it all that appealing--but that might have just been my youthful inexperienced palate. I have no idea what that beverage was called, though, nor anything else about it. Googling produces some mulberry mead recipes, but no historical/cultural info. If anyone knows anything about this stuff I'd be very interested.