Today, I thought I might write a post on Suriname Cherry because it is worth writing about. The Latin name for this fruit is Eugenia uniflora and the fruit can vary from purple to red to orange coloured.
The fruit has a complexity of flavours that are hard to describe and compare to any cherry or berry that we are familiar with. It has a resinous taste but sumptuous and unctuous at the same time. It is truly unique and there are sweet varieties, sour varieties and ones in between. I would like to dedicate this blog post to talking about it because there isn’t much information on it on the Internet. I think that it is mostly unknown and neglected and should be recognised for its taste as much as a strawberry is recognised by all palates.
Anyway, I am not going to re-hash a Wikipedia page; I think it is more important to talk about what I have learned about the fruit. The fruit grows in Belize. Belizeans call it ‘cherry’ and every-one here has tasted it before. It is one of the fruits that you have to taste in someone’s yard. Just like many of the indigenous, well-loved fruits of Belize, you will never (ever!) find it at the market. That is why I always think that money can’t buy everything…you need to grow it yourself!! The plant grows into bushes so they can be trimmed into hedges. We have about eight bushes on the farm that we placed inside duck coops for the ducks to sit underneath as shade from the sun. We had a great crop this year from all the ducky fertiliser (thank-you, my lovely duckies!!). In the past, we have eaten a few now and then out of hand. We have a slightly more acidic type so eating too much causes mild gastritis. This year was a bumper crop so I felt that it was my duty to do something with it. I feel rather peevish when I let fruit just drop off the tree and go to waste.
After picking the suriname cherries, I processed them by pipping them with a cherry pipper. You can do it with a small sharp knife…it just depends on whether you want intact whole fruit. Since I was picking about a 2lbs (1 kg) almost every third day for about two months, I had to consider preservation methods. In my Internet searching, I only found scant information on making suriname cherry jam. In piecing together the information, I learned that the ripe fruit does not have enough pectin to make the jam gel. So, you can add extra pectin to the fruit or interestingly, you can include a few seeds, whilst doing the fruit/sugar boil thingy to make jam.
Please note that it is hard to find pectin powder envelopes off the supermarket shelves in Belize. You can probably find it in the city or some specialty health food shop. In short, you don’t have the luxury of buying pectin here.
Oh but Munchkin always likes to do her own experimentation!! I discovered that by adding unripe suriname cherries (usually more orangey colour) to the ripe fruit, this provides enough pectin to gel the jam.
So, this is Munchkin’s Easy Suriname Cherry Jam Recipe:
Take 4 cups pipped suriname cherries and add 3 cups white sugar. Add about 10 unripe suriname cherries to get the pectin. Cook until you get to gel phase. Makes about 2 pints.
This recipe presumes that you know about gel phase and that you know how to make jam. If you don’t, look up u-tube to get familiar with textures and gelling temperatures.
If you don’t want to bother with the jam phase and you want a quick preserve that you can stick in the fridge, you can make a Suriname Cherry Compote.
This is what you do: take 4 cups pipped cherries and add two cups brown sugar. Cook under low/medium heat until the fruit loses its composition. About 15 minutes.
Once cooled, pour in jar and stick in fridge. Good for about 1 month and use it on yogurt, ice-cream, custard, cooked oats, breakfast cereals, etc. As a treat, I made cinnamon buns topped with suriname cherry compote. Very nice:
Okay, what else did I do? I found a recipe for Cherry Olives and substituted it with suriname cherries. This is good for cocktails or salads. This is what you do:
Pack a pint jar with 2 cups of pipped suriname cherries. Add to jar, 1 and 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 cup mild vinegar. Fill the jar with cold water (boiled already and cooled down to room temp). Put on cover and turn upside down. Let stand in fridge for 2 weeks before using.
(This was a modified recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, very ancient edition.)
Oh, I made a massive 1/2 gallon jar since I had so many cherries. It is August now and it is still good to eat in the fridge.
And here ends my adventures with suriname cherry for the year. The fruiting season was about February to April so it was 2 months of continuous harvesting. I have stashed away about 4 quarts of jam to have with ice-cream and as savoury, it is very good with roast pork. Looking forward to next year’s harvest!!
Oh, I had so much to write about today, I forgot to mention that we make a Suriname Cherry Elixir. That will be for another post!
