{"id":43,"date":"2005-07-06T17:36:53","date_gmt":"2005-07-07T02:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.taodekitchen.com\/2005\/07\/06\/cape-gooseberries-or-the-goosberry-fool\/"},"modified":"2008-06-20T18:19:58","modified_gmt":"2008-06-21T02:19:58","slug":"cape-gooseberries-or-the-goosberry-fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/general\/cape-gooseberries-or-the-goosberry-fool\/","title":{"rendered":"Cape gooseberries or the Goosberry Fool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who would have known that on that fateful day four years ago throwing down a few <\/font>cape gooseberry<\/font><\/a> seeds would mean a battle of epic weedy proportions. Yes, that first year a plant or two came up. I thought it would be oh so novel to be the first on my block to have a cape gooseberry plant. Cape Gooseberries seemed so rare (not to be confused with just plain ol’gooseberries) – especially when as the forager for a restaurant in San Francisco I was given the task to come up with pounds of it each week for a very delicious dessert the chef came up with. I scoured every farmer’s market until I finally found the one farmer in Northern California who had them. Victory. Never mind that this was years ago and I no longer worked at said restaurant. Somehow, like a poor easily imprintable pup or I suppose more like a brainwashed glassy eyed Stepford wife I had to have them. Hey, it was a stressful job!
\n<\/font>So in other words, I didn’t have a plan for all the cape gooseberries that would soon grow into my possession.
\n<\/font>Well, that first year I had bags upon bags of gooseberries… stored in my freezer. I even tracked down the chef and gave her bags of frozen gooseberries for which she didn’t really have a use for anymore. I finally found a use for them and incorporated them into 12 quarts of gooseberry barbeque sauce which I gave away as holiday gifts. To which I got a curious “What kind of Barbeque Sauce?”
\n<\/font>Ok, so I was over it – it was cheap therapy! I realized I was a victim of my own eccentricity and maybe a bit of post traumatic stress. I got it out of my system. I didn’t need to have these obscure berries that no one knows what to do with anymore. I happily ripped out the gi-normous plant. However, no one told me that within each berry there were thousands of tiny seeds.
\n<\/font>The next spring there were millions of cape gooseberry seedlings popping up all over the garden. In hindsight it wasn’t such a good idea to play fetch with the dog whilst tossing the gooseberries all about. Anyway, I resigned to my fate and pulled them out handfuls at a time. Finally after a few years I figured I had a handle on the seedlings and slowed down on my vigilance .
\n<\/font>2004. Tomatillos – now that was a nice crop to have for chile verde sauce and green salsa. I didn’t bother to pull it out last fall and it seemed to do fine through the winter. More salsa this year.
\n<\/font>This Spring I was walking through the garden and noticed the distinct aroma of Cape Gooseberries! Agh! I looked carefully at the tomatillo plant and it had morphed into a Cape Gooseberry plant. They happen to be in the same plant family and look identical. Ugh, outsmarted by a damn berry! Well, too busy to do anything about it – the plant grew and grew and gooseberry after gooseberry was produced.
\n<\/font>One day a month or so ago my brother’s visiting Korean in law was out in the garden picking the gooseberries. Wow, maybe there is some wonderful Korean recipe! Excitedly, I asked her what she did with them and she said “Oh, I don’t know but as kids we would make whistles out of the husks.\u00c2\u00a0 Bummer.
\n<\/font>Then last weekend, the SO decided to pick a grocery bag of them. The aroma filled the kitchen. SO said, “What’s good to do with them?” I said “Uh, I don’t know. They’re high in pectin and vitamin C, how about putting them in your smoothies?”
\n<\/font>I’d been feeling adventurous lately so decided to surf the web for Cape Gooseberry recipes and turned up with only two! only two in the whole wide world! Well, besides my famous Gooseberry Barbecue Sauce.
\n<\/font>So tonight I made <\/font>Almond and Cape Gooseberry Torte<\/font><\/a>. The batter was very stiff and I had my doubts but SO declared “I like it” and proceeded to have another slice. Now my brain is working overtime…hmmm, how about Cape Gooseberry Scones? or Cape Gooseberry Pancakes? Or Pan Roasted Duck with Cape Gooseberry and Orange Sauce? Strawberry Shortcake with Cape Gooseberry Sauce…I could go on and on but will spare you the Forest Gump.
\n<\/font>Anyway, that’s how I became the Gooseberry Fool… <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who would have known that on that fateful day four years ago throwing down a few cape gooseberry seeds would mean a battle of epic weedy proportions. Yes, that first year a plant or two came up. I thought it would be oh so novel to be the first on my block to have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}