Welcome back to Dirty Work, our series of dispatches from the MUNCHIES Garden. We’re inviting chefs, bartenders, and personalities in the world of food and drink to explore our edible playground and make whatever the hell inspires them with our rooftop produce. In our latest installment, Brooklyn Grange’s Cecilia de Corral turns a lesser-known fruit into a deliciously butterscotch-y pie.
Ground cherries are a curious thing. Also known as physalis or cape gooseberries, these tiny yellow fruits look like Smurf-sized tomatillos when they’re on the vine. When they ripen, however, their thin husks turn tan and papery before they drop to the ground—thus their name—presumably to get eaten up and have their seeds spread by forest creatures.
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Flavor-wise, ground cherries are like the Everlasting Gobstopper of fruits: Depending on the season and the climate, the little berries can have hints of ripe tomatoes, pineapple, and butterscotch, so they play equally well in sweet or savory dishes. We’ve seen them in cocktails, we’ve seen them in ceviche.
All photos by Farideh Sadeghin.
But what about a good ol’ fashioned pie?
For that, we turned to Cecilia de Corral, a project manager at Brooklyn Grange whose talented hands keep the MUNCHIES rooftop garden as beautiful as it is.
“I think it’s amazing to reach a certain point in your life and realize there are still flavors that you have not experienced. Ground cherries are that for me,” Cecilia says. “Truth be told, I’m still not convinced I like the flavor of a raw ground cherry, but every time I try one I am amazed by the taste. Fruity Pebbles, pineapple, caramel—I still can’t put my finger on it. Part of figuring out the magic of a ground cherry is sharing that flavor with everyone.”
Before she became a gardener, Ceclia worked as a baker for Zak of La Fruteria in Rockaway Beach, giving her the skills and know-how to transform our garden’s bounty into a simple but unique dessert.
“At the end of the MUNCHIES 2015 growing season, I pulled all ground cherry plants. Fruits dropped like crazy, and so as not to have to deal with thousands of ground cherries re-seeding in the bed next season, I collected as many of the dropped fruit as I could.”
Seeing that she’s not much of a fan of raw ground cherries, what could she do with ten cups’ worth of them? Pie. “I used a recipe I had pieced together during the summer and swapped rhubarb and strawberries for ground cherries. It worked perfectly,” she says.
To start, Cecilia made a standard short-crust pastry with flour, water, a little salt and sugar, and a splash of apple cider vinegar to make the dough more tender.
As with any pie dough, the secret is to avoid overworking it. You want the flour and butter to just come together, but not develop chewy gluten that’ll make the crust tough.
Once that was rolled out, Cecilia placed it into a pie dish and allowed it to chill in the fridge while she prepared the filling.
At that point, she consulted her lovingly used recipe binder, which she began assembling during her days as a baker at La Fruteria. “We would test breads, biscuits, tortillas, etc. I tried to keep good records of all of it, including our pies,” Cecilia says.
The filling is incredibly simple: just whole ground cherries tossed with light brown sugar and cornstarch.
But the pièce de résistance is the crumbly streusel that goes on top. As simple as the filling, it’s simply a quick mix of flour, cubed butter, sugar, and a pinch of salt.
Once the dough had rested, in the fillings went. After another chill sesh in the fridge—just to allow the flavors to meld—the pie went into the oven for 45 minutes.
Cecilia notes that because ground cherries are seasonal, you won’t always have ready access to them—but your pie dreams don’t have to be dashed. “Although I haven’t tried swapping any other fruits into this recipe, I have to imagine that some thin sliced apples would do very nicely,” she says.
When the pie came out of the oven, it was a study in golden-brown butterscotch-y goodness. Piping hot, it fell apart on the plate in a glorious mess of brown sugar sweetness and rich, buttery pastry. The following day, the cold pie was just as good but in a different form: With the flavors having had a chance to meld overnight, it was the most excellent breakfast pie we’ve ever had.
Yes, breakfast pie. Just chew on that for a minute while you run to the farmer’s market to grab the last ground cherries of the season.
