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Title: Cultivating a Taste for Ground Cherry Pie
Categories: Information
Yield: 1 Info

4 c Ground cherries
1/2 c Sugar
2 ts Quick cooking tapioca
Handful all-purpose flour
1 lg Lemon; juice of
2 Pie crusts (9")
2 tb Butter

One of the joys of making a kitchen garden is getting to grow and
taste new and unusual varieties of vegetables.

Unfamiliar vegetables are like unfamiliar people. They take time to
get to know. Lack of understanding can lead to mistakes takes. So I
put most of my energy into growing my own garden tested favorites,
and limit the number of unfamiliar varieties in each garden to just
one or two.

Elusive Habits:

One year I tried ground cherries, Physalis pruinosa, which produce
tiny tomato-like fruits in papery husks on low, lanky, herbaceous
bushes. I planted them in a corner of the garden that didn't get
much traffic, and never did see them sprout, or see them growing
during the summer, either. I thought they died from neglect.

When things thinned out later in the year, I discovered that the
whole area was covered with the trailing vines of the ground
cherries, and there were enough fruits to make an
intensely-flavored and very wigged-out ground cherry pie.

Ground cherries also are known as husk tomatoes, and are a smaller,
more flavorful cousin of the tomatillo (Physalis ixocarpa) used in
Mexican salsa verde. They're also related to the Hawaiian poha
(Physalis peru viana).

They like the same conditions as tomatoes, and thus will do best in
the portions of the Bay Area that stay warmest at night. However,
if you can grow tomatoes, you can grow ground cherries, and they're
worth a try. They always pull their disappearing act if grown among
other plants.

They like to drape their long trailing branches over their
neighbors' leaves, and run down among long grasses. Only becoming
visible when the other plants die back late in the year.

The plants are sprawling and grow about 18" tall. Their flowers are
inconspicuous little bells less than 1/2" long, whitish yellow with
brown spots. They set fruit sparingly until mid-season, when they
finally produce large clusters of fruit that develop inside
greenish husks. These dry when ripe to a lacy brown paper. The
fruits are green and unpalatable until ripe, when they turn a rich
golden yellowish brown.

Small But Sweet:

The fruits are the size of blueberries, and are intensely sweet
with a low acid finish. They're surprisingly savory and good for
preserves, although I prefer them in a once-every-five-years
version of ground cherry pie. More often than that, and I get
squeamish.

Order ground cherry seed from Nichols Garden Nursery,
1190 North Pacific Highway, Albany, Oregon 97321. A packet plus
handling charge is $1.65. You'll enjoy having the Nichols catalog
of herbs and rare seeds, too. (This info may be dated--the article
is 3 years old. -S.C.)

Plant the seeds in the spring in an out-of-the-way part of the
garden and make sure the area is not allowed to undergo severe
water stress. Ground cherries are hardy, but not drought-proof.
They'll grow in any good garden soil.

If you can avoid eating them all out of hand, try the pie.

Jeff Cox, a Bay Area resident, an editor and writer for
Rodale Press and author of several gardening books.

Directions Gently mix together ground cherries, sugar, tapioca,
flour, and lemon juice. Let stand for 15 minutes while you line a
9" pie pan with half of the pastry.

Preheat the oven to 450?F. Turn the fruit, mixture into the
pastry-lined pan, and dot the top with the butter. Cover with a
well-pricked top crust or lattice work of dough.

Bake at 450?F for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350?F and
bake for another 40 minutes, or until golden brown.

Recipe by Jeff Cox

Recipe FROM: San Francisco Chronicle, Dev 7, 1988

Posted by: Stephen Ceideberg, Nov 2, 1992

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