Berries

Wild raspberries growing roadside

 
It's been berry season here in Norway. I think I began raving about Norwegian strawberries back when I first moved to Trondheim in August of 2009, where I picked up a basket of them from a farm stand in the town center and thought it must have been a fluke that they tasted so good. Turns out that it wasn't a fluke - strawberries grown in Norway have a bit of a reputation. Apparently because of the cool climate, the growing season for strawberries is extra long and slow, which in turn give the strawberries an extra amount of bright red sweetness when they do become ripe.

In general, the strawberries here are smaller than I'm used to but the amount of flavor they have is far more than even the best ones I can remember having elsewhere. Thinking that a second hand sense of Norwegian pride might be jading my opinion here, I did pick up a basket of beautiful strawberries grown in Belgium the other day. They sat next to the Norwegian ones at the market (here signage always tells you where the produce comes from) and looked much larger and red with perfect shapes, while the small Norwegian berries looked a little sad by comparison (it is the end of the season afterall). I took the Belgian berries home and was severely disappointed to find that the flavor brought me back to the strawberries I knew before Norway - kind of bitter, pretty but in serious need of sugar to be palatable.

Strawberries aren't the only excitement around this time - Norway hosts a ton of other wild (and cultivated) berries through summer and early fall. I was particularly impressed on a small hike a few weeks ago to realize that Oslo's local forest floors are covered in blueberry bushes (the fruits there had just become ripe), and many streets here are actually lined with wild raspberries and a few wild strawberries if you look very hard. While dog- and house-sitting for some friends just near the northern edge of Oslo, Rolf and I went out a few days berry collecting - each time filling a small soda bottle with a mixture of blueberries and raspberries. To me, this is still an amazing experience - I think my capitalist upbringing still has me wondering if I have to pay someone for collecting the delicious berries!

All of this fruit has lead me to some baking experiments. First, at Rolf's suggestion I looked up a Norwegian cake that often uses berries or jam. In our Rullekake (or "roll cake") we spread a mixture of blueberries and raspberries from the forest, then topped it with whipped cream.

The Rullekake

Rullekake with forest picked blue- and raspberries

Blåbær Rullekake

  

After eating plenty of strawberries straight from the basket, I decided to try an American favorite - strawberry shortcake. Of course, they don't sell the premade angel food's cake I grew up eating with this, so a recipe search online gave me a proper "shortcake" which is something rather British that lies a bit between a southern buttermilk biscuit and a scone (recipe here). On day two of eating these shortcakes, we were running out of strawberries, so I grabbed a (very un-local) mango from the shop and mixed it with the berries.

Strawberry-Mango Shortcake