Summer July 2009
Homemade Berry Soda
Now that summer berries are here, I can’t get enough of them.
At any given moment I’m slicing them onto breakfast cereal, baking them into tarts, or popping them one after the other into my mouth. Sometimes I cook them down with a little sugar into a compote, which makes a quick topping for waffles or French toast, or even for those pre-packaged cheese blintzes you can find at Polish delis or in the supermarket.
Recently I cooked down some strawberries for a pancake topping, then for some reason decided to pour the finished compote through a
strainer. I worked it against the mesh with the back of a wooden spoon to squeeze out as much juice as I could, and ended up with a delicious, fresh strawberry syrup, perfect for my pancakes. As I was enjoying my breakfast the idea struck me: I bet this syrup would be awesome as the base for a soft drink. There was still some left in the pan – I poured it into a glass, topped it with soda water, added ice, and stirred. Refreshing, light, not too sweet, infused with that fresh, only-in-summer berry flavor — instantly, I knew I’d be drinking homemade berry soda for the rest of the summer.
When I had an evening free to experiment, I ran to the Farmer’s Market to stock up: blueberries, sour cherries, more strawberries, red currants, and gorgeous ripe black raspberries that left purple stains on my hands when I barely touched them. After
a quick rinse, the berries went into a saucepan and onto the stove. I added white sugar – only a little, less than a tablespoon per pint of berries – and a pinch of lemon zest, and a little water (not too much – only a few teaspoons). I gave it a stir, and as the mixture boiled I mashed it up a bit with back of the spoon or with a potato masher. I let it simmer for about 10 minutes, then turned off the heat. Once it wa
s just cool enough to handle, I poured it into a strainer set over a bowl, and pressed it repeatedly with the back of the spoon until only a dry, pulpy paste remained in the strainer. I made sure to scrape off the thick stuff that had accumulated on the outside of the strainer, and stirred this into my syrup as well.
And that’s it. When the syrups were fully cool I funneled them bottles. To make
a soda, just pour the syrup into a glass, top with soda water, add ice, and you’ve got the best, most refreshing soda (a.k.a. ‘pop’ for you Midwesterners) that you’ve ever had. If you like it strong, add more syrup. If you like it sweet, add more sugar. I use an old-fashioned soda charger to make soda water, but bottled club soda should work just as well. Enjoy!
Some thoughts and pointers:
**With blueberries, there was barely any pulp left in the strainer once I’d worked all the juice out. With raspberries, there was much more left. With strawberries, there was practically nothing left behind at all, but the resulting syrup with quite thick (it sort of looked like ketchup). For a more refined strawberry syrup, think about using a very fine-meshed sieve, or perhaps even cheesecloth.
**Experiment with how much syrup to use for each drink. I like a lighter drink, so I used about a jigger of syrup per pint of soda. You could use as much as twice that if you like a heavier, sweeter soda.
**Experiment also to find out how sweet you like the syrup. Taste the syrup often as you cook it and add more sugar if needed. It’ll be much easier to dissolve sugar into the syrup as it cooks than it will be once you mix it with cold, iced soda water.
**It’s best to use a strong, good-quality strainer for this. If you have a cheap one, you may bust through it as you work the berry pulp. I’d love to use a food mill for this but the ones I’ve looked aren’t fine-meshed enough.
**Strain the syrup while still warm – it thickens as it cools.
**Add vodka!
A reminder that the Borough Hall Greenmarket in Cadman Plaza is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a day long party this Saturday, 6/27. You can play CENYC’s Recycling Game; talk to a rep from
You can
black raspberries, blueberries, cherries (sweet & sour), cherry tomatoes (red & yellow), zucchini, yellow squash, pod peas, kirby cucumbers, green beans, yellow beans… I lost count after that. The floodgates of summer food have been thrown open, and from now until November the greenmarkets will give you wider variety and higher quality than anything you’ll find in the supermarket.
I needed rest from my weekend labors, and I needed a rice ball. I knew 

standard spinach-ricotta spread (flavored this time with a bit of nutmeg) that I enjoyed all week on slices of Nunzio & Sons’ sourdough bread.
Remember the Vermont Pharmacy? The storefront on the corner of Carroll and Henry that seems eternally to’ve been filled with the decrepit remains of what may once been a store? For the entire decade I lived in the area I always wondered how such a prime neighborhood location could stay idle. Well today I learned two things about it : first, that today it’s hosting a party to promote The Greenhorns, a non-profit that works to support and recruit new farmers (as well as a film about the same). This morning I stopped by as they were setting up and watched them
roasting goat meat on a bicycle-driven spit. They’ll have plenty of other food besides, along with music, demos, and a film screening. Stop by!
Secondly, I learned that later this summer the storefront will re-open as the Pharm/Farmacy, which will sell produce and goods from local farms, along with natural sodas & ice cream. That section of the neighborhood has long needed a produce market, and it sounds like they’re getting a good one!
of the Borough Hall Greenmarket in Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza.The market is marking the occasion with a day-long celebration on Saturday, June 27th. There will be, of course, lots of food (Long Island seafood and made-on-the-spot seasonal pizzas), along with talks and demos featuring green energy and slow food. You can play the Recycling Game and see videos and photos highlighting the market’s history, its farmers, and its customers. The party runs from 8am to 6pm. You can
farmed the land that Fred still farms. The farm has been in their family since 1855, and Fred has been with the Borough Hall Greenmarket since its first season in 1984. If you were around the market today, you may have heard Fred’s son Albert giving a talk about how the Wilklow Orchards apples go from seed to tree to truck to greenmarket. You can read more about Fred Wilklow and Wilklow Orchards 
he poor quality photo. I forgot to charge my camera’s battery, and so had to resort to my phone’s camera.)
r plans for them? She planned to add them to a gumbo she was making for a party. No doubt her guests got a real treat. As for mine, I’m thinking the peppery leaves will make an awfully good risotto. Mmm…
delightful surprise last week, in an early June visit to the Greenpoint Greenmarket, was big bunches of fresh, fragrant chamomile at the booth for Garden of Eve Farms. I brought one home and clipped it to the side of my fridge. It’ll hang it there until it dries, and then I’ll peel off the leaves and flowers for tea. Osczepinski Farms had chamomile as well, and it was looking abundant enough that you’ll hopefully still find some on the shelves in the upcoming weeks.
and as I did so my eye was practically assaulted by a deep red blaze of piled up bunches of radishes. They were nearly big as apples. They didn’t have quite as much spiciness as the multicolored radishes I’d gotten a
the day, but by the time of my late-morning visit they were already sold out.
firm, dry feta cheese from Consider Bardwell. And in conversation with Kate from Cayuga I got an update on their plan to bring flour to the market: they’re waiting on approval from CENYC (the flour comes from a partnership with another farm, not solely from Cayuga, so the partnership needs to be approved before it can sell in NYC Greenmarkets). I didn’t see any strawberries, but I’m expecting they’ll be plenty tomorrow.
There’d been rumors (notably over at
sized containers, filled to the top with shiny-red, seed-speckled, green-stemmed strawberries. Summer has arrived.
and indeed they were a treat, with a delicious, pea-like and very spring-like flavor. The shoots are harvested from the tender tips at the tops of the pea stalks, above where the older part of the stem thickens and becomes fibrous. Where they’re pinched off the stems will branch into multiple new stems, and of which will eventually flower and produce pods full of shelling peas.
of dried beans was on display at the Cayuga Organics booth. Cayuga is a newcomer to the market – this is their first year at the NYC Greenmarkets, and only their second week at the Greenpoint market. And dried beans are themselves something of a newcomer too, and are seen pretty rarely at farmers’ markets. Kate, at the Cayuga booth, explained that the few farmers who have brought dried beans to market have had to sell them at discouragingly high prices because they’ve processed the beans by hand. Producing beans on a large scale req
uires a fairly high level of mechanization for shelling, sorting, etc. Cayuga has invested in the equipment for processing of their crops, and so can sell them at a friendlier price.
The Fishkill Farms booth is at the Borough Hall market is so small you might overlook it, but be sure you don’t. Last week I found a bunch o
f beautiful, multi-colored radishes – red, purple, and white, sitting next to bunches of equally gorgeous purple-bulbed chives. The radishes had a lovely, spicy bite to them, and paired nicely with the tiny, peppery arugula leaves I also bought. Fishkill is a broadly diverse farm, and over the course of the summer they’ll be selling chard, kale, artichokes, cherries, nectarines, apples, berries and brown eggs from their pasture-raised flock of hens.
son I expected that some of it must have come from a greenhouse but in fact everything on display is field-raised.
herb plants, Wilkow orchards had gorgeous piles of red and pale green rhubarb, and will have for weeks to come. When I visited last week, Fred Wilklow told me that the strawberries and peas were just then in flower, and so should start appearing at the market in a few weeks. Fred also tells me that this year he’s expanded his herd of steers, good news for us lovers of his pasture-raised beef.