All Things Mulberry

My Pakistani mulberry tree starts producing ripe mulberries in early April.  I put a large tarp under the tree because when the berries are ripe, they fall off the tree.  The tarp makes it easier to find the berries and keeps them cleaner.  I sit down under the tree, take my shoes off, then perform what I amusingly call “Mulberry Yoga.”  I scoot, crabwalk, and roll my way around and under the tree, putting ripe berries in a bowl and the unacceptable berries in a little tub.

When the harvest starts, I get 4 to 5 pounds a day just from the tarp.  A week or so into it, the amount slows down to 4 to 5 pounds every few days, and often I shake the tree to make more berries fall.  That is what I end up getting; I cannot estimate what I lose to the birds, squirrels, bunnies, possums, raccoons, and skunks.  I don’t mind sharing with them, and the harvest is large enough that they actually share with me (unlike with my peach tree).

Pakistani mulberries are longer than a “typical” mulberry, and when they are dark purple, they are sweet and flavorful.  When they are dark, they look just like big, fat caterpillars hanging on the tree.

This is about four pounds of berries.

Forty to fifty pounds of mulberries is a lot to handle!  I decided this post would give you a sense of all the things I can do with such a beautiful and large harvest.

First and easiest, eating them fresh!  I’ll eat them right off the tree while picking and they make a great little side dish at lunch.  Fresh berries are excellent with yogurt (I like vanilla yogurt, berries, and a chocolate/coffee granola), and I think mulberries and jack cheese are a great combination (with a white wine, of course!). 

I share with friends, too.  I like to give to people who never had mulberries before; they are often surprised at the flavor.  I know that the mulberries I had as a child were Russian mulberries, which are tart and small compared to mine.  I think most of the people I give them to eat them fresh.

This year I made mulberry jam, where I cut the berries up a little and cook them in sugar with a little lemon juice until they form a syrup and thicken up.  It is not a standard jam because the fruit is bigger so it separates from the syrup more than jam.  It tastes great! I used less sugar than one usually puts into a jam, with the idea that it would be more "fruit forward."  It was, and I store it in the refrigerator to keep it fresh.  I think the next time I do this, I will chop the berries up more or maybe pulse them in the food processor.

Juicy jam.

I also started a batch of liqueur.  First, I put the berries in vodka and let them soak for a while.  Last year they soaked for 6 months before I strained them out; this year I waited two weeks.  This year, too, I used a muddler to press the berries in the jar.  This made a lot of juice, so I couldn’t fit much vodka into the jar.  Oh well, I put in what I could and tucked it away into a cupboard.  A few days later, I smelled ferment.  Sure enough, the juice and berries were bubbling away!  They smelled and tasted good but it was not what I wanted.  So, I moved the mixture into a bigger jar and added more vodka, which stopped the fermenting.

A lovely color, no?

When I strained out the berries, the mulberry-infused vodka was dark purple and the berries were mostly white – a good sign.  It tasted good, but it needed the sugar that makes it a liqueur.  Before I added the sugar, I poured in my attempt this year to make mulberry molasses.  I’ve done this in the past successfully:  basically, it is super-concentrated mulberry juice with a little lemon juice added.  But I didn’t feel I had achieved the molasses-level of reduction and the quantity was so small that I didn’t want to reduce it any further.  Then I added enough sugar to finish filling the jar.  I’ve made liqueurs for decades so I don’t really measure anything.  Now it is officially aging, which allows the flavors to blend and the sugar to dissolve.  In six months or so, I’ll taste it to see if it needs more sugar. 

Last year’s mulberry liqueur had aged for nearly 6 months, so I decanted it into a bottle.  It was wonderful!  Not an epic liqueur, but a very good one.  Smooth, just sweet enough, and a rich, fruity flavor.  The danger with such a liqueur is that it tastes so good that it is easy to consume too much in one sitting.  Sip at your own risk!

Mmmmmm.

This year I’m trying again to make mulberry wine.  Last year’s was good.  I’m not willing to call it a great wine, but it was certainly interesting.  Dry, when most people expect it to be sweet, with a mild flavor that made it clear it was not a grape wine.  One recipient thought it was excellent with a good steak.  This year I’m following the same recipe but most of my sugar was vanilla-scented.  I’m curious to see if that makes a difference in the outcome.

It sure smells good.

My experiment this year was to embed fresh berries in a lot of sugar and watch it turn into a syrup.  I took a picture every day for six days to see the changes.  What a fun and easy way to make syrup!  No cooking, just patience. 

A lot of sugar, layered with mulberries.

The view from above.

Day 1, layering is completed.

Day 2, juice is seeping into the sugar.

Day 3, more juice and it is spreading.  I shook the jar to mix it up a bit.

Day 4, look at that syrup formation!

Day 5, notice how the level has dropped?  I shook it again.

Day 6, that looks amazing.  I rolled it to mix it, too.

I was ready to add more mulberries to the jar, so I got to taste it (on Day 7).  It was unsurprisingly sweet, but I really enjoyed the strong mulberry flavor that went with it.  I added more berries, stirred it thoroughly, then put it into the refrigerator just in case it was tempted to start fermenting.  

In the past, I have made historical mulberries recipes.  One is a sort of breadcrumb pudding, called a Murrey.  You can view the recipe by clicking here.

 Another was a mulberry meatloaf, called a Red Murrey or Red Mulberry.  You can view that recipe by clicking here.  Yes, you read that right.  A mulberry-flavored meatloaf!

The other day I froze a box of mulberries knowing I want to make a cobbler in a few weeks.  

Last year I tried mixing the juice with milk, sugar, and flour, then heating it to make a thick saucelike dessert; this was a riff on an historical recipe that used cherry juice.  Unfortunately, the mulberry juice curdled the milk!  But I recovered from the blow and poured the curds and mulberry whey over sliced bread.  This was well-received and no one knew it was supposed to be different.

So there you have it.  Lots of things to do with mulberries!  I will continue to look for historical recipes that use them, with the hope I can report it on this blog.

Success! 

For to Make Murrey -- a Mulberry Pudding

My mulberry tree is producing great quantities of fruit this year.  I've been sharing with friends and finding different ways to utilize this bounty.

Project Gutenberg's digital version of The Forme of Cury, a collection of recipes from the late 1300s AD England, which can be found here, offers an intriguing, simple dish that I would call a dessert, but could also be served as side dish to a robust main course.

I interpret it as a pudding, that is, a thickened, sweetened dish flavored with fruit juice.  Back then it was called Murrey:

XXXVII. FOR TO MAKE MURREY [1].

Tak mulbery [2] and bray hem in a morter and wryng [3] hem thorth a cloth and do hem in a pot over the fyre and do thereto fat bred and wyte gresse and let it nazt boyle no ofter than onys and do thereto a god party of sugur and zif yt be nozt ynowe colowrd brey mulburus and serve yt forthe.

[1] Morrey. Part II. No. 26. [2] This is to be understood pluraly, quasi mulberries. [2] Read wryng. For see part II. No. 17. 2B. Chaucer, v. wronge and ywrong. [sic]

In other words,

Take mulberries and pound them in a mortar and wring them through a cloth and cook them in a pot and add fat bread [crumbs] and lard and let it not boil more than once and then add a good amount of sugar and if it is not colored enough, pound mulberries [and add them to it] and serve it.

My Redaction

2 cups mulberry juice (see My Notes below)

1 tablespoon shortening or lard  (I used vegetable shortening)

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups bread crumbs (dried, not fresh)

That is about 4 pounds of mulberries!

Put the juice and shortening into a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the fat is melted.  Add the sugar and stir until it is dissolved.  The juice might be steaming at this point.

Add the breadcrumbs.  Stir and cook over medium or lower heat -- as the mixture thickens, the heat may need to be reduced and the mixture stirred more often so it cooks without scorching.

Cook until the mixture is thick enough to pile up on itself when a spoonful is scooped up and dropped onto the rest.

Serve warm or chilled.

My Notes

The fresh mulberries went into a blender, which is a modern version of braying them in a mortar.  😀

Then I put the resulting puree into a cloth bag, closed the top with my hand, and used the other hand to start squeezing the juice out into a measuring cup.  The bag kept the seeds, stems, and some of the pulp out of the juice.  The juice was not clear and that did not matter to me.

I changed the order of mixing because I knew the bread crumbs would thicken the mixture, and I wanted the fat melted and the sugar dissolved before that happened.  Part of redacting is finding my way through the recipe to determine quantities.  I wanted to know that I added enough (but not too much) fat to achieve a good mouthfeel.  The same for sugar -- was it sweet enough but not too sweet?  I taste along the way, and I felt that the breadcrumbs would shift that test enough to make it hard to tell.

Early heating -- juice and melting shortening

So feel free to follow the order given in 1390 with my measurements.  

Also consider using butter instead of vegetable shortening or lard.  Be aware that your butter is probably salted, which will change the flavor -- it might even make it taste sweeter.

My bread crumbs were made from a few days old, slightly stale French bread loaf, so probably not a "fat bread".  If your crumbs are fresh, you made need a larger quantity to achieve a good thickness.  If they are very dry, you might need less.

The mixture with the bread crumbs did boil but only ever-so-slightly, more like a few "blurps" in the thickened version.

I felt the color was right, so I did not add any more berries or juice.

Starting to get thick

The Verdict

Still warm and very thick

We tried it still very warm from the pan, then cool, and then thoroughly chilled.

We felt it was thick enough even while warm to be just right.  It had a good mouthfeel: enough to taste rich (but not overwhelming) and substantial.  There were chewy bits from the larger chunks of bread crumbs, which we liked.

My guest taster, not knowing all that went into it, could taste the mulberries, thought there was lemon juice in it, that the sweet-tart balance was just right, and enjoyed it very much.  He liked it even more when it was cooler, and his favorite was when it was thoroughly chilled.

I agreed with his flavor assessment.  I liked it best warm or cool.  I liked it chilled but I felt the fat amount was too much; if I planned on serving it chilled, I would reduce the fat to probably 1 teaspoon.  I did not like the feel of grease on my lips while eating it chilled.

I wondered if it would be better with less sugar, and he felt that it would be too tart that way.  My mulberries were a mix of very ripe, ripe, and somewhat under ripe fruit, so the amount of sugar may vary depending on the overall sweetness of the juice.  

We both felt that the murrey did not need any spices.  The fruit flavor was dominant and didn't need enhancement from spices.  We wanted to taste the mulberries!

Success!

It would make a good side condiment to roast meat, especially when warm or cool.  But also as a dessert.  If a dessert, I think I would add some fresh berries on top when I served it.

Would 1/2 cup sugar to 2 cups juice have been considered a goodly amount in 1390?  I don't know, but the goal is always to produce a dish that is tasty, and I think I accomplished that.

I think the technique would translate well to using store-bought pomegranate or cranberry juice.  The sugar amount would have to be adjusted, so start off with less and add while tasting to get to just barely sweet.  The idea is to let the fruit flavor shine through.

Another variation idea is to mix some fresh pieces of mulberry into the finished pudding.  Or garnish the top with pieces or a whole berry or two, depending on the size.

A Red Mulberry -- A Medieval Main Course

My mulberry tree is producing, and I am loving it.  Fresh mulberries!  They are excellent just on their own, and they are also good paired with gouda cheese and white wine.  

But I wanted to do something historical with them.  For this I returned to Cindy Renfrow's Take a Thousand Eggs or More, a collection of 15th century recipes for my inspiration.  I had previously made a recipe from it named "Tart de ffruyte".  Click here to see it.

ISBN 0-9628598-2-6

What appealed was on page 200, taken from the Harleian MS. 279 - Potage Dyvers:

Early English above, modern English below

My Redaction

I was not convinced that this was served as uncooked meat and eggs, and it looked to me like a fruit-and-spice meatloaf.  That is approach I took in redacting it.

2 pounds boneless beef round steak

1 pound, 13 ounces fresh mulberries

2 egg yolks

2 ounces dried bread crumbs

2 + 1 teaspoons poudre fines

2 teaspoons sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place a handful of mulberries in the center of a damp cloth (I used a thin cotton cloth normally used for drying dishes), gather the cloth around them, then use your hands to squish the berries, letting the juice flow into a waiting bowl.  Twist the cloth around the berries, extracting more juice, until the mass feels firm and no more juice flows.  Discard the spent berries, then repeat until all the berries are juiced.  This gave me 1 cup of mulberry juice.

Cut the meat up into cubes then run them through the meat grinder.  (Or buy pre-ground beef.)

If the bread isn't already in crumbs, run them through the grinder after the meat.  Mix them into the meat.

Mix the meat mixture and the juice, then add the sugar and 2 teaspoons of spices and mix again.  Then mix in the egg yolks.

Shape the mixture into a loaf.  I made a round that was about 8 inches in diameter and 2 to 3 inches high.  Sprinkle the top with one teaspoon of the spices.

Bake for 30 minutes or until cooked all the way through.  Serve it forth.

My Notes

The poudre fines mixture I have contains cinnamon, cloves, ginger, grains of paradise, pepper, and saffron.  You can mix up your own version using most or all of these, and I believe you will still be mimicking the medieval time period well.

Meat and bread after grinding

A handful ready for juicing

Squeezed and twisted

Mulberry juice

Beginning to bake

Serve it forth!

The Verdict

It was cooked just right:  no pink left but everything was still juicy.  Also, the loaf was firm enough and held together when cut and served.  I would not change the number of egg yolks, although I usually use whole eggs when I make a meatloaf.  (I enjoyed the leftover whites for breakfast the next day.)

Don't ignore those juices!

The flavor was interesting!  The mulberry juice didn't taste like mulberries, but it added a lovely fruit element to the meat and spices.  The spices were a nice support for the juice and did not conflict with the meat.  

I think I would not put a full teaspoon of spice over the top; a half teaspoon would probably be better.  That was too strong.  But I liked the amount in the meat.  In fact, I think I could put in more and still enjoy it.

I'm glad I didn't put in much sugar.  I didn't taste it, and I was glad.  

My guest taster and I both enjoyed this meatloaf.  We found ourselves spooning the pan juices over the  top of our pieces just because they made it taste even better.  A piece of bread also did a good job sopping up the extra juice.

Success!  Definitely worthwhile repeating.  If I didn't have fresh mulberries available, I would try mulberry molasses diluted with water.  

When I make meatloaf, I typically soak the liquid (red wine!) in the bread crumbs for 10 to 15 minutes before mixing them into the meat.  I think I would do this with the juice if I did this recipe again.  It might disburse the flavor throughout the meat better, although you do not hear me complaining.  

Just in case you were worried, the juice did not stain the white cloth.  Most of the color left when I rinsed the cloth out in the sink, and the rest washed out in the laundry.

Loquat and Mulberry Jam -- a riff on a Pinedo recipe

When I tried this recipe from Encarnacion Pinedo's book, Pear and Fig Jam, (visit here to see it) it turned out wonderfully and also surprised me.  I had expected the pear to add a background note to the fig, but the recipe had me candy the pear chunks first, then embed them in the fig jam.  

This technique intrigued me, and I wondered how I could apply it to other fruits.  

My loquat tree is producing great quantities after the wet winter, and my mulberry tree is mature enough to produce well, too.  I decided to try candying the loquat chunks and embedding them in a mulberry jam.  Why not?

My Recipe

2 pounds, 3 ounces mulberries

3 pounds, 8 ounces loquats (weight before removing seeds and most of the peels; 1 lb, 12 oz after)

3 cups water

1 pound sugar

a splash of lemon juice

Mmmm.  Loquats and mulberries!

Loquats halved, seeded, and peeled

Mix the water and sugar.  Bring to a boil and hold it there for 2 minutes.

Cut the loquats into small chunks and add to the sugar syrup.  

Bring to a boil and then simmer for two hours.  I noted the temperature reached about 200 degrees F, the syrup was getting thick, and the loquats looked candied.

Cut the mulberries into small chunks if they aren't already small.  (Mine are Pakistani mulberries, so they are long.)  Add to the loquats.

Add the lemon juice.  Stir it in.

Continue to simmer until the temperature reached 210 degrees F, then remove it from the heat.

Put into jars.

Loquat chunks, nearly candied

Mulberries ready for the pot.

Finished jam

The Verdict

The color is a lovely dark red, the seeds from the mulberries and the orange loquat chunks add visual texture.  The scent is of mulberries but also a little something else.

The flavor is absolutely luscious.  Mulberries with little bursts of loquat, and it is sweet but not overly so.  The splash of lemon juice was a good choice -- while the lemon flavor is not discernable, the acidity helps the jam from being too sweet.

Oh my, success.  Wonderful success!  I would do it again if I can get enough mulberries at one time.  

I'm glad I was able to make this technique work.  Now I wonder what other combinations would be good?  Also, if mulberries aren't available, I think blackberries would also work well.

Later I made a jam from mostly loquats with a small handful of mulberries and a splash of lime juice.  The loquats didn't break up in the cooking process, so I used a stick blender and pureed the mixture once it cooked to about 210 degrees F.  This made it more like a spread or a fruit butter, and it was also very tasty.  I do love loquats.