Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Everything about dove hunting is ephemeral. It is a zephyr of a season, lasting just two weeks. Yet in that short span we rekindle friendships, some of which only exist in dove season. We recapture our lost humility: Doves are among the hardest targets to shoot, even with a shotgun — making all that summertime practice seem as if it never happened. And finally, once we manage to shoot a few, we remember just how wonderful it is to dive into a big plate of doves.

Then, in a flash, it’s gone. Our focus shifts back to deer, and then on to quail, pheasants and ducks. Those early mornings and late afternoons we spent standing in farm fields, scanning the sky, fade to memory.

So we live in the moment. Holly and I have been hunting doves relentlessly since the season opened Sept. 1. We know our window is small, and that one good cold snap could start the great dove migration that happens at this point every autumn; we’re expected to get such a cold front Tuesday. After that migration, it’s slim pickins.

There are two kinds of dove hunts, and I happened to have had both on Opening Day. The first kind of dove hunt is a true hunt — it is a search for a place where lots of doves happen to live, or at least fly over en route to water, grain (doves love safflower and sunflower seeds above all else), or a big ole’ dead tree, which is their favorite roost. It is a search conducted on public land, or on land owned by a friendly farmer who says something about having seen doves around in recent days.

Such was the hunt that my friends Kevin and Josh and I went on. Kevin had found the place — 90 miles south, down in Modesto — and it seemed a likely spot to find a good flight of doves. We awoke before 4 a.m. full of hope; I was certain I’d at least get a half-dozen. With a daily limit of 10 doves, I thought I was being conservative. Apparently not. After hours of tromping around, we saw maybe a total of six doves the whole morning, and shot none. Skunked. Sigh.

Fortunately I was invited to the other sort of dove hunt that evening. This is a “hunt” that’s really more of a “shoot” because the farmer is a) growing safflower or some other grain crop, ensuring the presence of doves; and b) there is both ample tree cover and water nearby. This farmer had it all scoped out. About 15 of us stood in a line and waited for the doves to arrive.

We did not wait long. The shooting was furious, and we all learned why it takes an average hunter between 5-8 shells to kill one dove. Doves are fast, and their aerobatics are bested only by their larger cousin, the pigeon. I had one dead to rights when it saw me — and reversed its direction instantaneously, in mid-air. All I could do was laugh.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

What is it like, hunting doves? You wear camo, or at least clothing in browns and greens, and stand near something like a tree, a bush or a row of grapevines — the idea is to remain just hidden enough so that a speeding dove might not see you until he’s in range.

Sometimes the birds fly in a consistent direction. Most often they do not. There’s a lot of, “Holy shit! That one came from right behind me!” or, “To your left!” or my favorite, “It’s right over your head!”

But even seeing a dove approach you from a distance doesn’t guarantee anything. Doves can fly up to 60 miles per hour, faster than any duck, and can, as I found out, turn on a dime. You need to shoot somewhere in front of them to actually hit doves. They’re that fast.

Most often the birds will come in flurries, punctuated by bouts of nothing. You get a little bored. Maybe you start looking at the plants all around you, or check your voicemail. That would be the time when a pair of doves whizzes by your ear, that distinctive whistling of their wings an audible “fuck you, hunter!” as you just stand there and watch their tails recede.

At least doves die easily. It doesn’t take much to bring them down, unlike pigeons, which in my opinion are the ultimate game bird — they can outfly anything else we hunt, and are far wilier than most other birds. Pigeons also can take an enormous amount of punishment before they go down. Doves, on the other hand, expire if you think undue thoughts in their direction.

At the end of opening day, I shot seven doves and came home with ten, thanks to a fellow hunter who did not feel like plucking that night. Several other guys limited out, and we most definitely had the makings of a dove feast.

A few days later, Holly’s friend Bill invited us to a farm field near Sacramento airport, and it has been more than a little productive since then. Holly scored her first-ever limit of doves, and we’ve each had some excellent shooting at this spot, made even better by its proximity.

Which leads me to another thing about dove hunting: It is not something done in a wilderness, or even really much of a wild area. Doves eat seeds exclusively, and grain seeds — safflower, sunflower, wheat, milo, even corn — are their preferred food. Dove hunting is deeply agricultural, possibly even moreso than pheasant hunting. The grumble of tractor engines in the distance, pickups loaded with Stetson-wearing ranch hands and disked fields bracketed by unharvested grain are your most likely surroundings.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Aren’t these doves cute? Like bite-sized chickens. But tastier.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

I can hear some of you: “How can you eat those cute little doves?” From time to time I do hear from people who wonder why we hunt doves at all. The comment I hear most often is that they are too small to eat. Since when did size determine whether humans can pursue a creature? See Exhibit A: Shrimp.

Besides, it’s true that good things come in small packages. There’s a lot of flavor in a dove, which, once plucked and gutted, averages a shade under three ounces. Doves have red meat like a duck, but no fat. They are best served medium or medium-rare, andbecause they rarely live very long, are almost never tough the way pigeons often are. Doves rarely run around, so their legs are tender, and because they are such strong fliers, they have unusually meaty wings for a bird their size.

That’s why, unlike most hunters, I keep my doves whole. Doves are the easiest of game birds to pluck, and, once you get the hang of it, it takes just a couple minutes to clean one.

By far the most popular way to cook doves is to debone the breast, lay it next to a slice of jalapeno pepper and wrap the whole shebang in bacon. Grill until the bacon is done, and you’re good to go. It is, in truth, delicious. Andwhile I agree that grilling is the best way to cook a whole dove, I took a different route with our first doves of the season.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Teriyaki doves, anyone? I know, I know. Teriyaki is another hunter classic. But I make my own teriyaki sauce, the traditional Japanese way. Marinate the doves 24 hours in the sauce, boil it down and then use it to baste the birds as they cook.

And who doesn’t like teriyaki? Sweet, salty, mildly exotic. I like how the sugars caramelize on the bird when they’re grilled.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

I also cooked another dish that’s becoming a classic with me: Grilled Doves a La Mancha, a Spanish-inspired recipe I first made at Dovapalooza, and have made many times since then. You get a hit of aroma from the rosemary and sage, and a little richness from bacon fat, which also adds smokiness along with the Spanish smoked paprika. I could easily eat a half-dozen doves at one sitting this way.

I had one more variation on grilled dove to try, and this one I suspected would be the best. Ever have bistecca alla Fiorentina? That’s that huge Italian porterhouse steak, grilled over charcoal and dressed only with really good salt, a lemon wedge, and maybe a drizzle of top-quality olive oil. It is my favorite way to eat red meat, and the method works well with venison and duck. But why not Doves Florentine? After all, doves are red meat, too.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Oooh yeah… As I’d guessed, this was the winner. Simple, and it really lets the flavor of the bird shine. I like the other dishes, but when you have such perfect, pretty doves, why mess with them too much?

Dove season ends a week from Wednesday, and Holly and I will hunt as often as we can until the curtain falls. And in that time, you can bet we’ll be eating a lot of doves.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Photo by Hank Shaw

Know what these are? I didn’t either, at least until last week. They are salal berries, gaultheria shallon. And I would have walked right past them had I not heard them calling my name.

Not literally — I’ve not yet resorted to talking to plants — but as I wandered around the Coastal Range foothills of Marin County, the sight of these odd-looking berries kept nagging me…

The reason I was in these hills was huckleberries, which are just now coming ripe. Huckleberries, specifically vaccinium ovatum, are the West’s answer to the blueberry. Dark, tart, sweet orbs that have both a highbush and a low-bush habit; there are several varieties in the West. All are a pain in the ass to pick in quantity, but are worth the effort. Huckleberries are on everyone’s wild berry “A” list.

Photo by Hank Shaw

A friend (thanks, Amy!) told me where to find some, and sure enough, I found a cluster of California huckleberry bushes. Sadly, the reason I know they are just now coming ripe is because more than half the berries in the cluster were still bright red. Sigh. Guess I’ll just have to return in a week or so.

I did manage to pick a few cups of berries, however.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Not so much that I could make a full-on huckleberry pie, or enough to process into one of the many fruit syrups I make — well, I could have, but it probably would not have left me with enough berries leftover to make my favorite huckleberry/blueberry dish: Huckleberry muffins!

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Now if you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you know I am not a habitual baker, especially of sweet baked goods. I’ll take a juicy venison steak or some fried halibut over cakes and pies any day. But what that hell was I supposed to do with all these berries I’ve been collecting?  Besides, muffins are easy. And good. If I start making sugar sculpture and working with fondant, come shoot me.

(Incidentally, if you don’t live in huckleberry country and want to try them, Earthy Delights will ship fresh ones to you.)

But Hank, um, well, weren’t you going to tell us about those freaky salal berries you mentioned a while ago? Yes, yes, but I needed to make those muffins first.

So I left my huckleberry patch in search of other bushes that might be more ripe, and kept walking past this rambling shrub with wide, leathery leaves and these funny-looking berries on them. I barely registered them as I searched for more huckleberries when I spied this:

Photo by Hank Shaw

Whoa. That flower looks almost exactly like either a blueberry flower, or a manzanita flower. Both of those are edible… <wheels begin to turn> …Huh. Lemme look at these funky berries a little closer.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Bingo! These are definitely edible berries. How did I know? Hard to say, exactly, but I have something of an eidetic memory for images. I knew I’d seen that weird pattern on a blue berry in one of my many foraging books. But what was it, exactly?

Fortunately I’d packed along both the Edible and Useful Plants of California and the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to California. Both books include salal. Not only was it edible, the books said, it was delicious. I ate a few. Good. Nice and sweet, but they lacked the tang of the huckleberries. Still, they were three times the size! I filled a plastic container with them.

Like the huckleberries, I’d not collected enough for a full-on pie, and salal pie is apparently what most people who collect them do with their salal berries. Holly and I didn’t want to eat a whole pie between the two of us, anyway, so I decided on a little mini pie in a ramekin.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

The crust is only on the top, and the berry filling cooks in the ramekin. I made these with four-inch ramekins, which were a little too big for one person — unless you really like sweets. A two-inch ramekin would be perfect for me. Keep in mind the recipe works with all sorts of berries: blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, thimbleberries, etc.

What’s the lesson in all this? To keep your eyes open and your guidebooks handy when you are out in the field. No one has every edible plant memorized, but once you spend enough time reading them, you will begin to see and “hear” the signs edible plants give you — even if you’ve never seen the plant before. This looks like that, and well, maybe they’re in the same family. That sort of knowledge helps you find an unknown plant in a guidebook.

Had I remained locked into huckleberries tunnel vision, I would still have come home with enough for some muffins. But I would have missed out on an opportunity to taste something wholly new to me. And as good as those muffins were, that opportunity was better.

The salal pie wasn’t too shabby, either.

MORE ON HUCKLEBERRIES

• Heidi Swanson’s Maple Huckleberry Coffee Cake
• Huckleberry Ice Cream, from the Pie Lady
• Langdon Cook’s Halibut with Red Huckleberry Compote

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

My friend Josh and I recently went up to the Sierra in search of berries. We’d scoped out some Sierra currants and gooseberries earlier this summer, and this was our trip to clean up on these berries. We did, and got a couple of surprises in the process.

High up — 6,500 feet or higher — there are still lots of wildflowers in bloom, and the many permanent mountain springs create little oases of lushness in an otherwise dusty environment. The berries are most often found near these springs. Josh wanted to collect elderberries, which are just now coming on strong up there. Me? I wanted to collect the mysterious Sierra currant and Sierra gooseberry, two fruits I’d never eaten before.

Back in June, we’d found lots of bushes, but they were still in flower.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Those pretty magenta flowers ripen into a deep blue currant, distinguishable by a frosty bloom — and the fact that it seems to have five o’clock shadow.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

I’d read about these currants, and different authors have different opinions about this berry: Some say they are delicious, others insipid. We tasted some on the bush, and found them,well, OK. Definitely edible, so long as you take the brown corpse of the flower off the end of the berry. A little mealy, no acid to speak of, but reasonably sweet.

All in all, though, the Sierra currant is a dud. I’d happily eat it as a trail nibble, or if I were in trouble, but I will not be picking them again. If you do want to play with these currants, be sure to pick off the dead flower bits first.

Lots of other currant species live in America, however, and I hope to find them soon. There is a Western golden currant out there that is reportedly fantastic — only I’ve never found a single bush. Anyone ever seen one? What about experience with other wild currants? Let me know.

All was not lost, however. Living among those Sierra currants were low-growing Sierra gooseberries. The plants are cousins, and share a very similar leaf — like a ridged, toothed maple leaf. Big difference between currants and gooseberries? Currants grow in clusters on branches with few or no spines. Gooseberries grow singly, and both the fruit and the bushes are spiky. Some more than others.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

You tough enough to eat these bad boys?

Lemme tell ya, picking these gooseberries absolutely requires leather gloves. Those are real spines that really hurt. What you see in the picture above are the three stages you want to pick gooseberries in: Thinking about getting ripe (note the berry is yellow, not green), almost ripe, and full-on zaftig ripe.

We found some plants laden with the spiky fruit, which I collected with gusto. Just the aroma alone was intoxicating. Sierra gooseberries smell sorta like Sweet Tarts candy. Sharp, fruity and very sweet. Josh and I broke open a couple berries to get at the pulp inside. Delicious! Just the like the domestic gooseberries I used to grow when I lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

But how to deal with those spines. Boy howdy are they nasty! I thought back to the manzanita berries I’d been playing with recently: They were best briefly boiled, crushed with a potato masher and allowed to steep for a long time.

I did the same with the gooseberries. I covered them with water, boiled it for 2-3 minutes, turned off the heat and mashed them with the potato masher. I let the mash cool to room temperature and then poured it into a plastic container to steep in the fridge for several days — you don’t need to wait several days, but I was busy with other things.

I highly recommend you go looking for your native gooseberries — one species or another lives in most every state; I used to collect the Eastern prickly gooseberry when I lived in Minnesota. Once you get them home, if they are too spiny to eat raw, follow these instructions on how to process gooseberries.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

What do you do with gooseberries? I am contemplating making a pie filling from the tan pulp you see at the bottom of the jar; it’s tasty, if unappealing in color. But the pink juice, which is a brilliant scarlet when you use ripe berries, taste like liquid gold. It will need a little sugar to drink straight, or you can make a syrup from the juice by heating it gently with an equal volume of sugar.

Use the syrup on pancakes, over ice cream, or you could make one helluva Bellini by mixing it with sparkling wine.

Or, you could do as I did, and make gooseberry sorbet. Gooseberries have quite a bit of acid to them, so they did not seem right for ice cream. But they were perfect in sorbet — bright, a pretty pale pink, and refreshing.

Flush with gooseberries and elderberries, We drove around looking for other likely places to forage. “What’s that?!” Josh said as we drove by some bushes. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Thimbleberries! Booyah! There is nothing like a thimbleberry. A cousin of the raspberry, it is more delicate, more deeply flavored, more perfect. Raspberry’s beauty is mortal. Thimbleberries are the fruit of Aphrodite.

I picked as many as I could, which is not easy. Thimbleberries are so delicate that they crush with even the slightest pressure. Best bet is to pop off the whole end of the plant so you can ease the berry off its base at home.

Yes, I know people make thimbleberry jam. Or cobbler, or whatever. But sometimes something is so wonderful you want to hide in a corner where no one can see you, popping one berry into your mouth after another — your eyes closing involuntarily — savoring every molecule before it’s gone. Thimbleberries are like that. Eat them plain.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

UP NEXT: Out on the Coastal Range. I’m your huckleberry…

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

I’ve been on a berry rampage this month. Since August 1, I have foraged for nine — count ‘em, nine — different varieties of wild berries within 150 miles of my house. That variety surprised even me; I literally stumbled upon several of the varieties, some of which I’d never even seen before.

Foraging led to cooking, of course, and I’ve posted roughly a dozen new berry-related recipes in the past month, and have done all sorts of bizarre experiments with some of the weirder fruit I’ve found; some of you read about my manzanita cider last week.

When I was done, I realized that to write one post on all I’ve learned would be madness — it’d take something like 5,000 words (yeah, I know, I can be long-winded. Sue me), which few of you have time to read. So I’ve broken my berry extravaganza into three pieces: Berries of the Central Valley, where I live; berries of the High Sierra; and berries of the Coastal Range.

Don’t live in California? Rest assured you can still read on — almost all of these berries also live in other Western states, and most have variants in the East, like the blackberries and elderberries I’m writing about today.

Are there other wild berries in the Central Valley? You bet. But with one exception, elderberries and blackberries are the most common, the tastiest and the easiest to find in quantity; the exception is the wild grape, and I’ll get to that one in September.

BLACKBERRIES

Might as well start with the one fruit pretty much every American can spot from a distance, the humble blackberry.

Photo by Hank Shaw

Blackberries grow everywhere here. They are invasive, full of thorns, and are oh-so tasty if you can beat the birds to them. So far as I know, blackberries can be found in every state, and they all come ripe between June and September, depending on where you are. The various species are all interchangeable in recipes.

The plants are easy to recognize: Blackberries grow as brier patches made up of thorny canes. They have white flowers in spring and the berries ripen from green to red to black. And, um, ahem, know that the blackberry is NOT a raspberry, which has red fruit. I have a vivid memory of my sister telling me to try that “red blackberry” once when I was a kid. It was so sour I almost cried. I am still plotting revenge on her for that one, all these years later…

A ripe blackberry pulls off the bush easily. They are very soft, however, so collect them in shallow, broad baskets so you don’t pile them too high. Doing so will smush the berries. You will undoubtedly pick lots of slightly less ripe berries, and this is a good thing — it balances the acid and sugar when you are making things with them.

Blackberries have excellent amounts of sugar and acid, but low tannins, which matters much only if you are making wine. Most people store whole berries by freezing them on sheet pans in one layer to prevent sticking, then putting the frozen berries in a sealable bag. I cook them down and make a blackberry syrup instead.

What do you do with blackberry syrup? Well, it’s pretty awesome on pancakes or vanilla ice cream; I served some over an ice cream flavored with yerba buena the other day. (Yerba buena is a kind of mint that grows all over Southern California.)

Another obvious one is blackberry liqueur. How easy is this? Wash dust off blackberries, fill a quart Mason jar two-thirds full and fill to the rim with 100-proof vodka. Let this steep in the pantry for anywhere from a month to a year, strain and sweeten to taste. Easy-peasy.

Getting a little sportier, I decided to make a blackberry panna cotta. Most blackberry panna cotta recipes are really vanilla panna cotta with a blackberry compote; I did something like this earlier this year with a lemon verbena panna cotta and a mulberry compote. This time I wanted the blackberries in the cream.

Photo by Hank Shaw

Ooh yeah, baby! I’ve been tinkering with the amount of gelatin in my panna cotta experiments (What? You don’t do panna cotta experiments, too?) and I finally nailed it with this one. A good panna cotta should just barely hold itself together, and be so rich and creamy you can’t eat more than a little ramekin full. Score that on this one.

Other things to do with blackberries? There are scores of recipes beyond the panna cotta, liqueur and syrup, but I like these best:

• My friend Elise’s blackberry pie
• Heidi Swanson’s blackberry limeade
• And my other friend Jaden Hair’s Salmon with Blackberry Brandy Sauce. I know, it sounds nasty and weird. It isn’t. It really works, and the sauce is actually better with venison.

ELDERBERRIES

The other main summertime fruit around these parts is the elderberry, sambucus cerulea. I’ve written about elderberries before, but there is always more to tell.

First off, let me say that while I can eat lots of ripe elderberries right off the bush, not everyone can. Some people get nauseous if they eat too many raw ones. Cooked, however, anyone can enjoy them, and elderberry syrup is considered a medicinal tonic in many countries; you can buy it at health food stores all over America.

Elderberries grow on large bushes that can occasionally become small trees. The buttercream-colored flowers are on clusters, and the berries ripen from green to almost black. In full sun, the Western elderberry will often develop a frosty bloom like a winegrape. Eastern elderberries rarely get this bloom.

Photo by Hank Shaw

Collect the berries by cutting whole clusters, which can weigh more than a pound each. You know you want to pick them when they are a) all black or frosty, and b) the stem is reddish. You can pick ripe clusters when the stem is green, but the berries won’t come off the stems as easily.

And you must get the elderberries off the stems: Every other part of the plant is toxic. Can you have a couple stems that slip by? Sure, no biggie. But do your best to get them all.

Elderberries have plenty of acid, good tannins, but not a ton of sugar. They are a deep purple when juiced and have an aroma almost exactly like red winegrapes — think of the bouquet on the fruitiest Zinfandel you’ve ever smelled and that’s close. I am sad to say that the Eastern elderberry lacks this wonderful aroma; it’s why Westerners don’t really understand that Monty Python joke about your father “smelling of elderberries.”

The berries are seedy, too, so elderberry jam is not ideal, although it will most definitely keep you regular. So what do you do with elderberries?

• Make elderberry liqueur
• Make the mysterious pontack, a British vinegary elderberry sauce said to be best after it’s aged more than seven years
• Elise at Simply Recipes makes elderberry jelly
• Use the jelly for a classic Cumberland Sauce with wild game
• Another friend, David Lebovitz, has a good recipe for elderberry syrup
• Make the syrup and use it for an elderberry ice cream
• Or, if you are really adventurous, make your own elderberry wine

Now I am not putting down the recipe for my elderberry wine because it is complicated and you need to have some idea about making wine to start with. Oh, and there is another reason: I include step-by-step instructions on how to do it in my upcoming book, which should be out in spring 2011. I know, I know, teasing is mean…

Tide yourself over with this elderberry ice cream, which has some creme fraiche and elderberry liqueur tossed in to make it just that much better. It’s damn good: Tangy and rich, smooth and fruity.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Incidentally, elderberry season is pretty much over here in the Valley, but it is just starting in the Sierra, and in the rest of the country.

UP NEXT: Berries in the High Sierra — duds, diamonds and deliciousness

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

If you live in the West, you’ve seen the mystical manzanita: It is a captivating shrub, if such a thing can be said with a straight face. Manzanita leaves are perfect ovals, thick to hold in moisture and colored a luminous, silvery green; under the full moon, the leaves glow eerily. But it’s the wood that is so unique: Bright red and gnarled, when the bush grows into its adulthood, its bark will burst and flake off like the aftermath of a bad sunburn.

Come upon a manzanita in spring and you could be forgiven for mistaking it for a weird blueberry bush. It’s not, as manzanita is in the arctostaphylos, not the vaccinium clan, but both shrubs have very similar urn-shaped flowers.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Come upon a manzanita later in summer and you will understand its name: Manzanita means “little apple” in Spanish. Look at the top picture: They really do look like little apples.

Ever since I moved to California I’d read that the berries were quasi-edible, that someone — Indians or Spaniards — did something with them at some point. I even bought a couple of manzanita bushes to plant in that blast furnace I call my front yard. But I bought them because manzanita is a beautiful bush, not because I had designs on the berries.

That was five years ago. My bushes are big and beautiful, and they set many hundreds of “little apples” this year. I resolved to figure out just what to do with them. As it happens, the Franciscan friars, who were the first European settlers of California, made a sort of cider from the berries. The California Indians did the same thing, plus they made a meal from the dried, ripe berries they’d later use for porridge in winter.

Cider, eh? I like cider. But really? I’d eaten a berry or two, and I can tell you manzanita is definitely not something to munch on while walking a trail. The berries are loaded with tannin, which sucks all the moisture from your mouth and replaces it with a coating of felt — or at least it feels that way.

There is very little information on manzanita as an edible plant. Charlotte Bringle Clarke mentions it in her excellent book Edible and Useful Plants of California, as does Sylvia Ross in her book Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast.

Opinions and instructions vary wildly. Best I can suss out, the Spaniards liked the berries greenish, while the Indians waited until they were brown and dry. Being of European descent, I decided on picking my manzanita berries green, but with a little rosy blush on them.

Photo by Hank Shaw

I got four cups from one bush, and I did not even pick it clean. Definitely enough to play with. And I’d need to play, because I wasn’t exactly sure how to make manzanita cider.

The berries are dry. So I first decided to boil them for 20 minutes, then smash them with a potato masher. I then let this cool overnight and poured it into a Mason jar. I let the solids settle for a day. Next day I poured off the liquids through cheesecloth into a clean Mason jar. I noticed a lot of fine sludge. I tasted it. Ack! Pure tannin, dry and bitter.

I tasted the cider. Um, ick. It was just like the sludge. Undrinkable. But, there was hope embedded in the loss: I could definitely taste an apple-y, acidic flavor that was indeed tasty — before the tannins clubbed me in the forehead.

Back to the drawing board. I thought, hmmm… If you boil sumac, you get the same bitterness. Sumac “lemonade” is made by just pouring room temperature water on the berries. Now manzanita is way too hard to do this, so I compromised by pouring boiling water on the berries, letting it steep for 20 minutes, and then smashing them with a potato masher.

After an overnight steep, I put everything back into a Mason jar.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

I strained this through cheesecloth and took a sip. Bingo! Light, crisp, just a tiny bit tannic, and even ever-so-slightly sweet. It tastes disturbingly like a non-carbonated hard cider or a Pinot Grigio, only without the alcohol. You can sweeten this if you’d like, but I like it as-is.

So, here’s what you need to know to make manzanita cider:

• Pick the berries when they are blushing, late June in the lowlands, September in the high Sierra. You want them green with a bit of blush, at least where the berries have been exposed to the sun; berries in full shade won’t get the blush.
• Wash the berries, which will be dusty and might have cobwebs and other debris on them.
• Your ratio is 1 cup manzanita berries to 4 cups water.
• Boil the water and pour it over the berries. Wait 20 minutes.
• Crush the berries with a potato masher. Don’t wail on them, just bruise and lightly break the berries.
• Let this steep at room temperature overnight.
• The next day, pour the cider through a fine sieve into a mason jar. Now do it again, this time through cheesecloth. Save the berries, because you can make another batch of cider with them. Now let your cider sit in the fridge overnight. More sediment will fall to the bottom. Carefully decant the good cider from the jar, leaving as much of the fine sediment in the original jar as possible. The sediment is loaded with tannins, so you want it out of your cider.
• Drink some. It will taste a little like a dry hard cider. Sweeten to taste for a cooling drink. I’ve added 2 tablespoons of sugar for every pint of cider, but I often just drink it plain.

Can you do something with manzanita cider other than drink it? You bet. Mix it with an equal volume of sugar to make manzanita syrup. You can then make ice cream, sorbet, or just use it as a concentrate for a cooling drink.

Where can you find manzanita? You’ll find these bushes growing in great profusion in the Sierra Nevada of California, but various species will grow as far north as British Columbia and as far east as Texas. They are, for the most part, lovers of arid places. It doesn’t matter which species you come across – all manzanita berries are edible. I should note that a few species of manzanita are endangered, so pick from large masses of the plants, not isolated individuals.

Is the drink worth this effort? I’d say yes. Manzanita is all over the place out there, and the berries store really well in the fridge, up to 2 months. Some will burst and release their little black seeds, but no biggie. I have had no mold problems, and the cider tasted just as good as when fresh-picked. The drink is really quite elegant-tasting. I’d be proud to serve it in a wineglass to someone who does not drink alcohol — or, for those who partake, mixed with vodka. Manza-tini, anyone?

Photo by Hank Shaw