Recipe Box: Tart Gooseberry Pie Recipe and More

My grandfather loved gooseberry pie. I don’t remember seeing it at many family gatherings, though, and the few times I did, I didn’t try it. My childhood palate was definitely not up for the challenge; one of my regrets is that I wasn’t more adventuresome in my younger years when it came to food.

“Pop,” as we called him, came to Kansas from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. My ancestors on that side of the family came from England and Scotland, which explains his love of gooseberries. An English fondness for the fruit seems to be an inherent part of the culture. Pop adored the tartness of a gooseberry pie, which is often created with the green, less-than-ripe version of the fruit. Others enjoy the fully ripened reddish fruit in pies, jams and jellies, equating the taste of a gooseberry with that of a grape. Pop, though, liked the pie when it was mouth-puckering good.

Related to currants, the American gooseberry (Ribes hirtellum) and the European gooseberry (R. grossularia) both like humid and cool climes, with a good dose of cold during the winter months. Gooseberries do well cultivated in slightly acidic, well-drained and heavier soils, and in containers. The plant, however, is sensitive to hot and dry conditions. If you plant more than one shrub, give them plenty of room, planting them 4 to 6 feet apart. You don’t want those arching and thorny branches to become intertwined, as it would make harvesting and pruning a little difficult.

Whether you hunt for gooseberries, discover a U-pick farm filled with the shrubs, or you grow your own, you’ll be as delighted with the results as my grandfather was.

Help Wanted

•In the November/December 2014 issue of Grit, a photograph of Pickled Green Tomatoes was included in Your View. Several readers have requested the recipe, but the photographer does not have a specific recipe; she basically just throws it together. Does anyone have a recipe for Pickled Green Tomatoes?

Do you have any other recipes using green tomatoes? What’s your favorite pickling recipe? With what produce?

• Faye Fees, Eden, South Dakota, hopes other readers will share their old-time sauerkraut recipes.

We’d also like to see your recipes for other fermented foods, such as pickles and other pickled foods, chow chow, relish, and other condiments.

• Bunny Kochis, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was taught to make Southern cornbread by her grandmother. It was made with white cornmeal, flour and lard, and baked in a cast-iron skillet. She’s not sure of the other ingredients or the measurements. Her grandmother and mother hail from Pikeville, Tennessee.

What is your favorite cornbread recipe? Any family secrets?

If you’ve been looking for a long-lost recipe, or can provide one, please send an email to Recipe Box, or write to Recipe Box, c/o Grit, 1503 S.W. 42nd St., Topeka, KS 66609. Email is our preferred method of communication, and requests and submissions will be more likely to be answered in a timely fashion if sent electronically. Please include your name, full mailing address, and daytime phone number on all correspondence. Recipes cannot be returned; we will forward the first 10 recipes to the person who made the original request, and then file the rest for possible online or print publication. Addresses are not printed to allow us the opportunity to publish recipes before sending them on to the requesting party.