I recently foraged for hawthorne berries and ginkgo nuts here in NYC. Does anyone have some good recipes for these? Also, does anyone know how to find the wild persimmon trees on Staten Island? Thanks!

-- kathy niederhoffer (squeakywheel2001@aol.com), October 29, 2001

Answers

I know you can make a jelly or jam with hawthorne haws but I don't have the recipe. Sorry.

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), October 31, 2001.

I spent a couple hours with some old favourite books tonight. Hopefully your hawthorne's have a good flavour to them -- to quote one source, "when they are good, they are not very good, and when they are bad, they are horrid". If they're possible, however, you can make jelly or marmalade out of them.

To make Haw Jelly, crush 3 lbs of the fruit, add 4 cups of water, bring it to a boil, cover the kettle and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Strain the juice through a helly bag and discard the spent pulp, seeds,a nd skins. If red haws are not too ripe, they will furnish enough pectin for jelly making, but if they are very ripe, add 1 package of powdered pectin to the strained juice. If your juice needs more acid, you can add strained lemon juice (up to 2 lemons). Put 4 cups of this juice in a very large sauce pan and bring to a boil, adding 7 cups of sugar, bring to a boil again, and jell test it. Pour the jelly into sterilized straight-side half-pint jars and seal with sterilized two-piece dome lids.

To make Haw Marmalade, cook some haws in a very little water for about 15 minutes, then force through a conical colander, or ricer, witha wooden pestle. For each batch, use 1 1/2cups of strained pulp and the juice and peels from 1 lemon and 1 orange (I most frequently see seville oranges recommended, but I have also had some very good marmalades made with tangerines. I like sweeter marmalades.). The juice is stirred directly into the pulp, but the peels require that you use the zest only (another reason I like tangerines -- no pith!) You can use a vegetable peeler to remove just the zest, then snip the resulting pieces up into fine shreds with a kitchen scisors.

Next, put it into a saucepan with 2 cups of water and about 1/8 teaspoon of soda, and boil them for 20 minutes, drain, and add these cooked peels to the other ingredients (I'm winging it here again...tangerines I have done without the preliminary cooking to remove bitterness because they aren't so bitter). One package of powdered pectin is added, return to the fire, and as soon as it boils, add 5 cups sugar. When it returns to a boil, let boil hard for 1 minute, then pour into sterilized jars and seal them.

Also noted that to one batch of marmalade they added 1/2 teaspoon of powdered rosemary and that it was their favourite batch.

I haven't tried either of these -- no hawthornes around. So these are Euell Gibbons' recipes. Hawthorne berries are also useful medically.

I haven't found any recipes for the use of ginkgo seeds. They are used in chinese medicine combined with ma huang, elecampane or mulberry leavees for asthma and persistent coughs. 3-4 seeds are enough for 3 doses,and it states that exceeding the dosage can lead to skin disorders and headaches.

If I happen across anything else, I'll post it.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), October 31, 2001.