I first heard about these marvelous little bursts of unique flavor about a year ago.
As I am right into cooking, I frequent a couple of cooking sites.
One of these is run by a couple French Chefs who are damn good, and they mentioned these berries make "the absolute best seafood sauce imaginable".
That of course got me thinking...
Here's the standard description of these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physalis_peruviana
After a little searching, I found a seed supplier in Ontario, ordered up a few, and started them off early inside our little greenhouse. At first they struggled, and I thought they were perhaps a lost cause. But we planted the little guys here and there, and I took off to go fishing for a month & change. When I got home, their transformation was nothing shy of amazing! They had literally jumped up to 2.5 feet in height, and had taken over most of the garden space wherever we had planted them!
Wasn't long and the berries began to form. Had to taste a few of course, and they were amazing. Very unique, like nothing I have ever tasted before. A little sweet, but not overly so, with hints of strawberry & pineapple. Interesting, and I could see why they might make a great seafood sauce.
Jump forward to yesterday.
Harvest was great. Ended up with almost 5 of the largest ziplocks full of the cherries still in their husks. They keep very well in the fridge, so we were able to stockpile them for eventual processing.
Each berry comes in it's own husk which has to be removed:
Time consuming, but well worth the effort!
Eventually I got them all husked & cleaned up:
That's about 7 1/2 pounds worth.
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