TROPICAL TASTE - The Fruiting Hedge

 Surinam cherries (Eugenia uniflora) commonly grow almost everywhere I've ever lived and you see them mostly planted in rows along a fence line and trimmed to be used as a hedge.

They are also known as Pitanga cherries and as Brazil or Brazilian cherries. The plant is known throughout the tropics and sub-tropics and I have encountered it as far north as the South Carolina Low Country where the temperatures do not reach freezing too often.

The attractive cherries it produces are mostly ignored, except for children who like to eat them right off the bush and the crops have never, to my knowledge been grown commercially.

The brightly colored berries or cherries are loaded with vitamin C and have a very distinctive taste and smell.

The shape is almost like a little round Oriental lantern with vertical ridges on the little globes, and the seeds or pits, are large and round. When they start to ripen, the fruit starts turning a beautiful orange color, further resembling little lit lanterns.       

Of the two varieties known, the most common is bright red when fully ripe and has a slight resinous taste. The second variety reaches a
very dark red to almost purple-black when ripe and it is much sweeter.

We have two large shrubs in our yard of the latter, almost purple,
sweeter variety. They have been trimmed in the past, but not as a
uniform shaped hedge. At the moment they are about 10' tall and
about the same size in span. They usually fruit about twice a year,
in spring and fall, and have been covered in fruit for about three weeks now. The birds don't seem to bother them and though in Florida they seem to attract fruit flies, I have not seen any pests around them here.

The taste is sweet with a slightly tart undertone. The bushes had
been previously largely ignored, except to pick the occasional
cherries off and eat them right then and there, but with the bumper
crop this year I decided to see how I could use them and preserve
them.

If the fall crop is as generous as this one, I will probably make
some vinegars and jams for holiday gifts this year.

SURINAM CHERRIES VINAIGRETTE

I like making flavored vinegars and I love collecting pretty glass bottles with the clamp type stoppers to use for my homemade vinegars. The vinegar from these cherries is a beautiful ruby red in color.   I made this batch a bit thicker than usual by using no water, since I also wanted to use it as a condiment with chevre and crackers.  For a thinner vinaigrette, of course add the water.  Yields about 2 cups. 

3 cups cherries, washed and hulled – not pitted
3/4 cup white distilled vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water

Cook in a non-reactive saucepan until cherries are soft and mushy, about 20 minutes or so, stirring once in a while with a wooden or plastic utensil.

After cooking, pass them through a fine sieve, pushing as much of the pulp as you can through it.

After passing through the sieve I let it cool a bit, bottle it and refrigerate.  We enjoyed some of it as a condiment over soda crackers and chevre (fresh goat cheese) during our picnic this past Sunday.

For this evening, I made beautiful salads with fresh greens from our garden: shiso, mizuna, mitsuba, sweet basil and Dawn Dewa 'spinach', roasted chicken breast cut in small pieces, Caribbean papaya, cut in small chunks and sliced fresh strawberries.  I drizzled a bit of the Surinam Cherry Vinaigrette and sprinkled with a bit of chopped and toasted macadamia nuts.   

This was our dinner this evening!

		Sonia Martinez, Gather Food Correspondent
	Sonia's column, 'Tropical Taste' is a regular twice-monthly feature of Gather Essentials: Food. Sonia is a cookbook author and freelance food writer for several publications in Hawaii, and is also a Hawaii Island Journal restaurant reviewer in partnership with her son Anthony Mathis.  She lives in a beautiful rural rainforest area on the Big Island of Hawaii. You can keep up with Sonia's adventures and ongoing love affair with Hawaii by joining her network, or visiting her food & garden blog at Sonia Tastes Hawaii.