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!
Sherbet is a traditional cold drink prepared, popular in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. In the gardens of Ottoman Palace, spices and fruits to be used in sherbet were grown under the control of pharmacists and doctors of the Palace. The word “sherbet” is from Turkish “şerbet“. Also called “sorbet”, which comes from French “sorbet” & from Italian “sorbetto“. The word is cognate to syrup, & historically was a cool effervescent or iced fruit soft drink. The meaning, spelling and pronunciation have fractured between different countries. It is usually spelled “sherbet”, but a common corruption changes this to “sherbert“.
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…
PHALSE KA SHERBET
Ingredients:
400gms phalsa berries / grewia asiatica
2 cups sugar; powdered (increase if need be)
1 tsp rock salt
Crushed ice
Mint sprigs to garnish
Method:
  • Wash the berries well, & soak in drinking water for 30mins to an hour. This helps soften the berries.
  • Put them in a big bowl with more water if required, wash your hands well, & squash the berries with your hands. This way the seeds will come apart. Each berry has a small central seed.
  • Push the mashed stuff through a soup strainer, adding more water if necessary to get a concentrate. Add the sugar & salt, & water as required.
  • Pour over crushed ice & serve garnished with a sprig of mint.
  • Note: I think a cooler can possibly be made out of other tart berries too.

To wind up, a huge THANK YOU Coco @ Purple Foodie for helping me become a DOT COM. I’m now @ www.passionateaboutbaking.com

Posted by Deeba @ PAB

Published by

Deeba @ PAB

About me: I am a freelance food writer, recipe developer and photographer. Food is my passion - baking, cooking, developing recipes, making recipes healthier, using fresh seasonal produce and local products, keeping a check on my carbon footprint and being a responsible foodie! I enjoy food styling, food photography, recipe development and product reviews. I express this through my food photographs which I style and the recipes I blog. My strength lies in 'Doing Food From Scratch'; it must taste as good as it looks, and be healthy too. Baking in India, often my biggest challenge is the non-availability of baking ingredients, and this has now become a platform to get creative on. I enjoy cooking immensely as well.

44 thoughts on “BERRY DELICIOUS INDIAN COOLER … Phalse ka Sherbet”

  2. Looks delicious. I’ve never seen mulberries – they kinda look like little worms, huh? 🙂 And congratulations on the .com – I want to make the move too… sometime.

    Reply

  5. Thanks for getting the envy leavel a little higher for me cos I get none of these beries here 🙂

    Congrats on going .com!

    Reply

  6. That cooler looks so good! I’m glad you have found some way to beat the heat and dust!!!

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  9. OOOHH!! This looks so refreshing, so delicious,and so inviting, I love the color also. Beautiful,Deeba.

    Reply

  10. It’s so fun to see what local berries you have. They sounds pretty exotic to me! Looks yummmy though.

    Reply

  11. Today it is excelent warm weather here and just came back home after a long walk of 2 and a half hours and i would love to have that glass of refreshing berry juice, i don’t think i have had this berry.

    The mulberry i love, when i was young on the way to school one garden had so much mulberry in a tree , it used to hang outside theie wall and we kids used to jump and snatch the mulberry, the good old days 🙂
    I alway admire the time you put for your pictures, they are beautiful as always.

    Reply

  12. Oh, I’ve never seen those before… Actually not mulberries either! (But I know they are related to silkworms…) I thought the sherbet would be a frozen dessert– I learned something new today! 🙂

    Reply

  13. Okay this is so neat. First the mulberries, I would love to pick some off a tree! And the others I have never heard of. Beautiful photos as well!

    Reply

  14. Delicious berry cooler, i have seen mulberries here, thanks for sharing the pictures,will sure notice this whenever i go for shopping…admire always ur stunning pictures:)

    Reply

  19. awesome clicks..looks delicious…i havent seen some of those berries yet,i need to search for it 🙂

    Reply

  22. Yum, that sounds refreshing Deeba! We don’t have phalse here, but my mum has a huge mulberry tree. Mulberry pies and crumbles are great, and the fruit freezes pretty well too.

    Reply

  23. This looks so cool & refreshing. I'm unfamiliar w/Phalsa, but do have a mulberry tree across the road. What is you thought of exchanging cranberries for the phalsa?

    Reply

  24. Hi Deeba,

    Congrats for the new .com…:) and love your this new recipe.. reminds of the childhood eating it with salt and buying it for 25 to 50 paisa:)

    have fun
    Anu S

    Reply

  28. That drink is Bliss & i really really Miss
    the phalsa
    its been more that 15 years that i have had it:-( I remember pciking fistfuls when i was in India. phalsa & jamun is greatly missed here. Lovely pic & congrats ..for the .com

    Reply

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    Reply

  34. What a neat drink. I like what you see in your crystal ball and congrats on becoming a dot.com! Everything here rocks!

    Reply

  35. Deeba!!! you have got absolutely no clue how speel bound i am seeig ur presentation n the “magic” that you whip out from your kitchen…lovely!!!

    one of the best presented blogs..hats off to you…

    Reply

  36. Ooh, Congrats Deeba with your DOTCOM, and I’ve never taste phalse before, but judging from your picture it look super delicious 🙂

    Reply

  38. phalsa is available here for a week or so in season and you have to be really lucky or alert not to miss them. sherbet looks great.

    congratulations on the .com!! you go girl!!

    Reply

  39. Holy cow! Those are some seriously large mulberries. The ones we get in the states are about 1/4 of that size! I love this summer cooler, Deeba. It’s oh-so-pretty.

    Reply

  41. Hi Instead of picking Mulberries by hand
    You could take a tarp, set it under the tree, and throw a rope over with a weight on the rope, and shake the berries down. ( i’m a winemaker)

    Saw you looking up Sherbet berry (phalsa berries zone 9) I see I can try to grow them in a container In Chicago LAND, In the mean time Would like to try that recipe with another fruit. Thank You.

    Reply

  42. Thanks for sharing this ! I miss Phalse. They were so common earlier when I was a kid. So hard to find them these days

    Reply

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