Haskap ✦

Camerise

What it is

Haskap is an Ainu word from Hokkaido, where the berry was eaten long before anyone bred it as a crop; Quebec growers, who planted it in earnest from the 1990s, call the same fruit camerise. It ripens with the first strawberries and weeks ahead of the raspberries, which makes it the opening soft fruit of the northern year.

In the kitchen

The skin is too thin to survive handling, so buy them frozen unless you picked them yourself, and work straight from frozen. For a coulis, warm them only to the point of collapse and sieve — a real boil turns the flavour flat and jammy.

Goes with

Cream Honey Vanilla Dark chocolate Yogurt Lemon Almond Duck

In season alongside

Gooseberry Sour cherry Plum Redcurrant Tamarillo Bergeron apricot

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