When Is A Cherry Not A Cherry?

When it's a Barbados Cherry (Malpighia emarginata) otherwise known as Acerola, West Indian Cherry, or wild Crepe Myrtle.

 Actual size of fruit about 3/4".

 Sure looks like a cherry, doesn't it?  Doesn't quite taste like a cherry though.  Barbados Cherry has its own unique tart flavor.

Barbados Cherry is an evergreen  bush/small tree native to Central and South America and southern Mexico, and is grown as far north as Texas, and of course here in Florida as far north as Cape Canaveral.  It's also grown in sundry parts of Asia and India.

The fruit can get as large as 1" in diameter, but is generally half that.  They are juicy, but the "pulp to pit" ratio is lower than a real cherry -- that is more pip and less pulp.  Each fruit has two or three pips or seeds.  Barbados is very high in Vitamin C -- each berry contains an entire day's dose of C, as well as a variety of antioxidant. Tart, not sweet, this is one healthy-for-you fruit!  

If you live in the growing area, you owe it to yourself to plant one of these neat bushes.  A 3 year old tree will cost $25-$30 and will start bearing fruit shortly after you plant it out.  Lady Sally and I planted one a couple years ago, and started getting fruit within a couple months.  Give them lots of sun and water.  Barbados Cherry are also popular as bonsai specimens because of the small leaves, pretty pink flowers, and of course the fruit.

Elsewhere Barbados Cherry fruit is made into juices, jams, pulps, Vit. C concentrates and even baby food.  Here in the States you don't often see recipes for them, simply because Barbados Cherry aren't commercially grown for their fruit.  But they are a beautiful ornamental that fruits nearly year-around, and deserve better treatment than letting the fruit go to waste.  

Lady Sally and I keep a zip-top bag in the freezer, and as berries come ripe, we just pop them in the bag with the others.  When there's enough fruit to make something yummy, I thaw out the entire bag full.

Virtually every Barbados Cherry recipe begins with "simmer the fruit in a sugar and water solution..."   You've got to get those pips out, and that's the first stage.  I simmer them until they start to soften or 'pop' -- similar to making cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries.    Orange, clove and allspice go well with Barbados cherries as well as cranberries. How much sugar and water?  Start with two cups of water and a cup of sugar per two cups of whole fruit.  How long?  Call it fifteen minutes to start.

Once the berries are softened, the next step is removing the pips.  Rubber gloves aren't necessary, but they do help.  Put the cooked, cooled fruit in a large bowl, and have a ramekin or something to put the pips in.  Just start picking up the fruit and squeezing them, breaking the skins and separating the pips from the flesh. 

Sometime later... you'll have a couple quarts of cleaned fruit to work with.  At this point you can freeze the fruit for later use.  Or, taste them, add more sugar if needed, then serve warm over a nice vanilla ice cream or homemade short cake with cream.   

Or, you can bring some to a boil, add a packet of pectin, and make jam.

Or, best of all, IMHO, you can make a Barbados Cherry Pie.  Here's my recipe:

3 cups pitted Barbados Cherries, drained (save the liquid as a fabulous simple syrup)
1 cup sugar (you can use sugar substitutes as well)
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each ground Allspice and Cloves
Butter

Combine the sugar, flour and spices, then fold in the fruit. Place  in a 9-inch unbaked pie crust. Dot with butter and put on a top crust (solid or lattice). Bake at 425F for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 350F and bake another 30 minutes until browned.

I actually prefer tarts to pies - that is no top crust.  You get more fruity goodness and less pastry.  Use 4 or more cups of fruit to fill up the crust, with proportionally more flour and a bit more spice, to taste.

This is a 4 cup tart in a 9" crust.  I hate to waste things, so I re-rolled the crust trimmings and made the central mini-top.

This week's post is the perfect segue, as Lady Sally and I are off to the island of Barbados on Thursday, to attend a destination wedding.  So for the next couple weeks I'll regale you with recipes for real Bajan (not Barbadoan) cuisine.   I've been doing my homework.  The national dish is  cou-cou and flying fish.  Cou-cou is a sort of molded polenta -- cornmeal "mush" with fried okra -- served with fried or steamed fish.   That, and lots more to come!