Along the dunes in North Truro, MA, the end of August means rosehips, a fruit far less appreciated than the flower which precedes it. This makes sense, since despite resembling lustrous, bite-sized tomatoes, rosehips are fundamentally inedible, at least without a little massaging. After the flowers have bloomed and been fertilized, they contract back into dense packets of thick red skin enveloping tiny, stubbornly-set seeds, the rose’s essential redness concentrated down into an impenetrable little nub. These same late-summer weeks also produce a rarer, easier-to-enjoy fruit, with stands of rosehips interspersed with bunches of beach plums (the beautifully named prunus maritima), a relative of the cherry whose ubiquity along New England’s coasts has faded with modern beachfront development. The two plants often occupy the same territory, and having had the good fortune to spend a week of summer 2015 on a stretch of beach dominated by both of these plants, I ended up collecting a healthy amount of fruit from both. The only question afterward was what to do with all this bounty. Seeking the easiest and most efficient possible answer, I set out to making a basic jam. My first step upon returning home was to clean the rose hips, which are filled with hard seeds laced with indigestible hairs, the consumption of which supposedly leads to what Native Americans referred to as“itchy bottom disease.” I thus went through the painstaking process of breaking each fruit and scooping out all the seeds, before realizing that this step isn't actually necessary when jamming; boiling the fruits works out the toxins on it's own. I did, however, learn a bit about how hard it is to clean rose hips, and a few hours later, jam was made: a tangy, slightly-bitter suspension that definitely benefited from inclusion of the plums, which balanced out the flavor with some much-needed sweetness. Other options for processing rose hips include reducing them into a sauce for roasted meats, which apparently has some flavor similarities to hoisin, although most recipes seem to suggest making this sauce from a starter of jam anyway. Although hoisin is often referred to as “plum sauce,” in the UK, and while I’ve heard many times over the years that it’s made from a plum base, this actually isn’t true (it’s fermented soy beans with vinegar, chilis, garlic and spice). Another, less straightforward option is rose hip soup, a characteristically Swedish concoction that melts the hips down into soothing, fruity pap. This summer I returned to the Cape, planning to collect another hearty armful of hips for soup. Unfortunately, arriving one week later than the year before, I found the bushes already picked clean by birds, the hips that remained hopelessly parched by the summer sun. Not one to accept defeat so easily, I settled for the second best option, purchasing a pre-made mix from Greenwich Village candy store Sockerbit (more on this place to come, in a later post). Rosehips may now be forever associated in my mind with summer, but their soup actually makes a perfect autumn appetizer, especially since despite the traditional presence of some floating biscuit-y things in the broth (Swedish almond macaroons, apparently), this actually works much better as a hot drink. A bit sludgy to sip out of a mug, but the mix produced a broth that perfectly displayed the tangy taste of the hips while bringing out their submerged sweetness. I’m now saving the other packet for a rainy day, possibly one this spring or summer, to fashion into the cold version of this dessert, paired with vanilla ice cream and those aforementioned macaroons. Ekstrom’s also makes a bilberry version (Blåbärssoppa), which I may have to purchase if it ever crosses my path, if only for the sake of comparison.
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