The sweet taste of nostalgia seasons these late-summer Northwest gems
written by Corinne Whiting
For many who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, blackberry season brings along with it sweet childhood memories of summers gone by. Take Tony Vujovich, for example, co-owner and chef of Seattle neighborhood pizzeria The Local 104. He loves blackberries primarily for the nostalgia involved. “They remind me of childhood summers in Washington state,” he shared. “I went to Camp Houston in Gold Bar, Washington, as a kid, and we would make ice cream at the end of the camping season with the first blackberries in the season, picked riverside by the campers.”
Today he gets to share the delicious fruit with families dining at his welcoming Lake Forest Park eatery. “The wonderful thing about blackberries is the intensity of the flavor and the meatiness of the fruit,” he said. Their favorite blackberries come from Sidhu Farms located in Puyallup—a site that offers an amazing variety of berries.
Blackberries are a member of the rose family, and not a berry in the botanical sense. “It is an aggregate fruit composed of small drupelets,” he said. “They love the acidic soils that are created by the copious Northwest rains.”
The variety seen most often in the Northwest is the Himalayan blackberry, which can root off the tip of a cane. They grow the way a slinky moves, Vujovich explains, growing tall, falling over and rooting from the tip on the ground. “I fertilize all my cane berries with coffee grounds,” he said. “One of the differences between a raspberry and a blackberry is that the core (the torus) stays with the blackberry when you pick it.”
Vujovich thinks the uniqueness of blackberries stems from their meaty, sweet and tart nature, which makes them excellent in a combination of both sweet and savory applications. “They are equally at home in a cobbler, a sauce for a strip steak or as a pickled garnish,” he said.
Jack Bartleson, executive chef at Leavenworth’s Icicle Village Resort, appreciates this fruit for its versatility, too. At their scenic mountain getaway, his team sources from Skagit County’s Hayton Farms, a fifth-generation, family-run business that grows certified organic berries. Blackberries grow well in the moist and not-too-warm regions of the Pacific Northwest, and as the rich soil and heavy rain in Skagit and Thurston counties provide the perfect growing conditions, this region is home to many commercial berry farms.
Bartleson also commends berries’ vast span of flavor, depending on the picking time and size of the berry. “This lends well to a variety of culinary applications,” he said. “They are also super high in antioxidants, making them a delicious and healthy part of our PNW summer menus.”
Bartleson describes the taste profile as ranging anywhere from bright and tart, to deep and sweet. “Wild blackberries grow all over the Pacific Northwest and especially in the Leavenworth area where I live, so I’m lucky to happen upon blackberry bushes by just going for a walk through my neighborhood,” he said. “My favorite way to eat them is to pick them fresh and serve them over a quality vanilla ice cream.”
Photo by The Local 104
He loves using the tart fruit from early in the season as a way to offset other sweet flavors in a jam or dessert. And really sweet fruit from later in the season proves an ideal addition to a creamy cheese appetizer or summertime salad.
Vujovich advises that the best way to treat fresh blackberries is by using them as quickly as possible—water is their enemy. “Water creates an environment in layered blackberries that grows surface mold and speeds up their decay,” he said. “If you are not using them in a day or so, wash them, lay them out on a single layer on a cookie sheet, and freeze them. Once frozen, place berries in a freezer bag and store in the freezer for up to a year.” If baking with blackberries, don’t soak them in water, as this diminishes their flavor. Instead, a quick rinse is all they need.
Beyond canning or preserving blackberries as jams or jellies, you can also pickle and dry them for extended shelf life—and to enhance different flavor profiles from the berries, Bartleson said. The opportunities for culinary creativity seem endless.
To Vujovich, the intense sweet-tart flavor of blackberries always tastes like the end of summer. “It makes me melancholy for the end of summer—and excited for the fall,” he said. “Every year, I make a salted vanilla ice cream with blackberries. It reminds me of the hand-churned ice cream I made as a kid at Camp Houston.”
