BERRY DELICIOUS INDIAN COOLER … Phalse ka Sherbet

“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer, and like it.”

Russel Baker

Oh to have a berry to call your own! What a blissful feeling it is to find pretty berries here after going green with envy reading about blueberries, cranberries & just about every other berry under the sun in blog land. Along comes a plum-purplish tiny Indian berry, the phalsa…Throughout our childhood, & until a few years ago, it was fairly common for door-to-door hawkers door to ring the doorbell, selling this berry at our doorstep. The summer afternoon silence was often shattered by their piercing calls, when very few would venture out while strong, dry & HOT summer winds, or the ‘loo‘ as it’s called in Hindi, swept across the Northern Indian plains, laden with dust! (It’s dusty & windy outside as I write).Phalsas were carried on cycles in large wicker baskets, covered with a wet gunny bag, which was showered with water constantly. I’ve seen this for years, but have never bought the berry. The hub though remembers eating the berry with salt when he was young; now these are much too tart for our grown up teeth!!Grewia asiatica or phalsa are tiny sweet and sour acidic fruits, which are sold in the market during summer months in India. The pleasant sherbet or squash is prepared from the fruit pulp by mixing it with sugar and used as an astringent, stomachic and cooling agent. The fruits allay thirst & are said to be good for heart and blood disorders, fevers and diarrhoeaLet’s see which berries we find here in India … strawberries (this year we’ve seen a better than usual crop, though the season has now ended), cape gooseberry or physallis, & this very tart/acidic one – grewia asiatica or ‘phalsa‘! And then of course, cherries. Come Spring, another berry which weighs down branches of trees is the mulberry. The mulberry is a highly perishable berry, comes in various shapes & sizes, but doesn’t find takers in the market because it needs very gentle handling. Folk like us who enjoy this plump & sweet berry, pick them off trees. Once ripe, they just readily drop off making quite a mess of the place. My helper at home religiously gathers bagfuls for us & drops them by. Until last year, I never gave any berry a more serious thought other than just ‘fruit-to-eat’! Then slowly much envy crept into my system … & I began experimenting with local berries, which is how this sherbet came about!

The phalsa heralds the beginning of really hot long summer days in North India … the sherbet a quintessential feel of the summer in India. The selection of berries that bloggers post about is enviable, but I’m happy to have this pretty little berry. The colour ‘phalse ka rang’ is used as local reference for fabric etc, i.e. a particular purplish-pink, the colour of the sherbet. The tart-sweet smell of the juice is very nostalgic, & takes me back to days gone by. I don’t remember seeing the berry, but the flavours are deep set in my mind, & the picture of the hawkers on cycles still fresh! This is a very sour and versatile fruit which can be used in making jams, pies, squashes, chutneys etc, though all I’ve heard of, & tried so far, is a sherbet. I can see panna cotta & sorbets in the future in my crystal ball…

400gms phalsa berries / grewia asiatica

2 cups sugar; powdered (increase if need be)

1 tsp rock salt

Crushed ice

Mint sprigs to garnish