This Saturday I went to meet with our new berry supplier and pick up our first batch of berries. Each summer we get blueberries and blackberries from Bloublommetjieskloof Farm (in Wellington) and Kleinjongenskraal Farm (in Citrusdal) and strawberries from a small grower in Stellenbosch, but up until now I’ve never been able to source organically grown raspberries.
Alison has a small farm in the Franschhoek valley, and she supplies several local restaurants with berries. I found her through a mutual friend, and was very excited to meet her and see the crops. She uses organic pesticides, and only when necessary, and has a team of ladies who pick everything by hand. I bought several kilos each of blackberries, raspberries and boysenberries, for us to experiment with in the kitchen. I’ve never really cooked with boysenberries, which look like a larger, redder and juicier blackberry, so there’s going to be a lot of experimenting in the kitchen.
Since the first cherries are supposedly arriving at the end of this week, and I’m hoping blueberries might arrive next week, it’s Berry Central around here right now. It’s going to be a lot of fun revisiting great flavours from last year (blackberry yoghurt, strawberry basil) and also inventing some new ones (raspberry choc chip, boysenberry cheesecake perhaps, or lemon verbena and blackberry?). Mmmm…
