Berry Fantastic

• Leoni Cohen-VelidaIn Victoria, Australia, I discovered a love for foraging. Victoria is full of forests, thickly laden with blackberries for the taking.

I would gorge on them, one for the bucket, two for me, one for the bucket, two for me. And when I arrived home, I’d be elated at my efforts – despite my severely stained purple skin.

However, the term ‘berries’ in the culinary sense does not translate to berries in the botanical sense – but the majority of us throw them in the ‘berry’ box anyway. And rightly so, as that box is brimming with juicy, vibrant, often pulpy, round little gems that arrive in summer and taste exotic in desserts and savoury dishes, or if you’re like me, just as they are.

The fact that a grape and a tomato are actually true berries, and a raspberry and blackberry are aggregate fruits is way over my head. It defies logic really, that those with ‘berry’ in their name – are not! Yet I don’t care which has more than one seed or produced from one ovary. A botanist, I am not.

I just care about getting them in my fridge and consequently into my stomach.

And while their lifespan on the shelves is a few short weeks in the year, frozen berries are the next best thing to allow you to enjoy them all year round. And given berries are packed with nutritious fibre and other anti-oxidants, that’s a berry-fantastic thing!

Berries are a constant for me as I enjoy using them in juices, over my breakfast and stuffing them into ice cubes to make drinks look way more extravagant than they really are. The point is; it doesn’t really matter what you do with berries. They’re always a winner.

For me, the most convenient frozen berries are from Euroberry. They’re a South African-based company founded in 2000 and what sets them apart is that their fruit and berries are individually quick frozen (IQF), meaning that you don’t have this solid frozen lump of berries like some competitors do. You can simply pluck out what you need and presto!

Euroberry products are available in 1kg packets and you’ll find their range of berries in a variety of retail outlets throughout Namibia.

Try their black cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, red cherries and mixed berries.

Put them in a breakfast smoothie, in a cherry and steak sandwich or maybe a blueberry gazpacho.

It’s never too late to discover the beauty of berries (or aggregate fruit if you want to be precise).

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