Food of the Gods, Mortal Prices

The fruit came from Meat Palace, and that's probably how my troubles began, for Meat Palace specializes in Russian charcuterie, and you take your chances ordering anything else. A few weeks back, as I shuffled about the cramped shop not far from my home in Brooklyn, a dusty jar of sour cherries caught my eye. But back at the apartment, my enthusiasm turned: tinny yet vegetal, with suggestions of mothball, the taste of the first one reached such an unpleasant crescendo as to render one eyebrow twitchy with distress. I've overheard a Russian proverb, however--The first pancake is always a blob--and, steadfast, I fished out a second.

It turned out to have all the appeal of the first, this time with overtones of blood (blood?). Only then did I read the label: these were no cherries, but rather cornelians--small red fruit that look similar at first glance. Although I'd never heard of them before, research revealed an impressive pedigree. They're what the sorceress Circe fed to Odysseus's crew after transforming the men into swine. Ottoman Turks used cornelian stain to dye their fezzes red. The cornelian bush's sturdy branches were long used for daggers and arrows (hence the family name dagwood, a.k.a. dogwood). And to this day, many living in Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Armenia, and Iran purportedly enjoy the fruit. I set out to find its appeal.

However, when after phoning grocers far and wide I still came up empty-handed, I began to suspect that native eaters of cornelians didn't actually like them either. Yet authors, from grande dame Jane Grigson to "Wildman" Steve Brill (an infamous forager once arrested for picking Central Park dandelions in an NYPD sting operation), sing their praises: reduced to jam, pressed for soda, baked in a pie. Accounts from a Pennsylvania national park of expat families covertly shaking branches so that cornelians would fall on their picnic blankets whetted my appetite for reconnaissance; I slipped into the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where eleven specimens of Cornus mas stand dormant through the winter, and stared them down. My efforts, like the trees, were fruitless.

Then, on a bleak and frigid morning, desperate, I boarded a train bound for a village on the south shore of "that great wet barnyard," Long Island Sound: Great Neck was F. Scott Fitzgerald's model for West Egg, the hamlet Gatsby called home. Its gentry is Iranian now, and within the stores stretched along two miles of the central boulevard, shopkeepers speaking lilting Farsi offered me mulberries, barberries, bergamot, quince--all bewitching, none cornelian.

But I've heard another Russian proverb--For the mad dog, seven miles is no detour--so I deadheaded back to the city, unfazed, sweeping into Kalustyan's, the famous purveyor of exotic sundries, where like a incompetent truffle hog I finally stumbled upon some cornelian preserves that had promise, right under my nose. With the chewy texture of Moroccan olives and a flavor that crosses the juicy brightness of cherries with the meatiness of beets, these at least have the potential for greatness. And as long as winter keeps the fresh ones at bay, and with strong tea to bolster them, they'll do.

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Ararat Cornelian Cherry Preserves (16 oz. jar, $8.99) are available to the curious and foolhardy at www.kalustyans.com.