Summer’s Fruity Bounty

This summer is looking more and more like one that cooks will remember for a while. As farmers recover from the travails of the last two years, it seems that we have everything we could ask for, in good condition and at good prices.

First, the strawberry harvest boomed through and--though it has moved from Southern California to the north--it continues unabated. California’s cherries are winding up the best harvest in a couple of years, and Washington is getting started. Apricots are kicking into high gear about now as the first Royals and Blenheims appear in the markets. Peaches, plums and nectarines have already begun and even the early fruit has been promising.

Now come raspberries, and again the news is good.

Traditionally, raspberries were the bridge between strawberries and stone fruit. They usually dip briefly in price about now, then go back up a little before dropping for a more extended stay in early August. This year’s crop dipped more quickly than normal, hitting the benchmark $1 a pint wholesale in late May.

And there it has remained, as a good volume of shipments continues to keep the price low. That $1 a pint wholesale should translate to retail prices of around $1.75 on special to $2.50. Food marketers love to promote berries together, offering specials on strawberries, raspberries and blueberries at the same time.

The only possible cloud on the horizon is a spell of hot weather last week in the primary growing area around Watsonville, says Dan Murphy, a salesman for raspberry shipper California Giant. Too much heat can damage the blossoms on incipient berries, reducing the harvest down the road.

When you’re looking for raspberries, buy those that are the deepest in color. The redder the better, in this case. Almost all raspberries these days are sold in hard plastic “clamshell” boxes, which eliminate a lot of the crushed berries we used to get, but it’s still worth checking to make sure there isn’t much bleed-through on the bottom of the box.

Raspberries are among the most delicate of the fruits. They need to be kept very cold (as close to freezing as possible without actually freezing). They are also very sensitive to moisture. Though water on the berries will begin the decaying process, berries stay best at a relative humidity of around 95%. There’s obviously a very thin margin of error.

In fact, Mikal Saltveit, a professor in the UC Davis agriculture department, recommends keeping the berries in the clamshell but placing the box in a perforated plastic bag as well. The plastic bag increases the humidity while the perforations prevent condensation.

“Once you get any free water on the surface of these fruits, they begin to decay rapidly,” he says. Not only should you hold off washing them until you’re ready to use them, you should also be careful where you store them in the refrigerator. The best place to store raspberries, he says, is in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator, where the humidity is higher.

If you want to get ridiculous about it, even the type of refrigerator you use can make a difference. Frost-free refrigerators, for instance, can be a problem.

“The way they make them frost-free is they cycle the temperature to melt the ice on the coils,” he says. “When this happens, the berries can be colder than the air around them. and water will condense on them.”

If all of this is making you a little paranoid, the surest way to deal with raspberries is to eat them right away. This summer, anyway, there’s sure to be plenty.