OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. To keep you sated between episodes, we’ve brought on food writer Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian and ecologist, to highlight different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for cherry-almond crisp with a spark of black pepper and cardamom.

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It’s the 4th of July this week, and what better way to celebrate our country’s independence than with a classic American fruit dessert? Sweet cherries might not originally be from the United States, but we do have our own bitter cherry native to the West Coast — Prunus emarginata, or bitter cherry. As the name suggests, the fruit does not taste great (in fact, it’s not even edible); Indigenous people opted to use its bark instead. The species cross-bred with European sweet cherries in the Northwest, but alas, Prunus x pugetensis doesn’t produce fruit. Doesn’t matter! The Northwest still grows more sweet cherries than anywhere else in the United States. What 18th-century cherry beverage was a favorite of the Father of our Country himself, George Washington? Read on to find out!

Unexpected benefits of a tighter regulations, ending hunger and food waste in one fell swoop, new Oregon sweets and so many good things in markets

Freshly picked morsels from the Pacific Northwest food universe:

Marine protections improve coastal food systems

A recent study led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center found a link between stricter restrictions and the lives of coastal communities. It might seem counterintuitive that stronger ecological protections such as limiting activity in the ocean or more stringent wastewater regulations could actually lead to an increase in income and food security in the communities typically most sensitive to the immediate cost of increased regulations, but Oregon has its own prime example of how true this is: When groundfish (fish like Dover sole, rockfish and black cod) populations reached historic lows in 2000, marine protected areas were designated to protect these species, and the fish populations bounced back decades faster than scientists predicted, leading to around a $60 million uptick in trawl fishing income on the West Coast.

Urban Gleaners reduce food waste to fight hunger

OPB’s Crystal Ligori reported last week on the remarkable efforts made by Urban Gleaners, a Portland-based nonprofit that connects hungry people with the food that restaurants, caterers and markets would otherwise throw away. And unlike food banks, which collect some personal information about the people who use their services, Urban Gleaners’ Free Food Market is open to anyone who shows up, no questions asked. Two decades after starting up, Urban Gleaners collects 80,000 pounds of food per month to distribute to the community.

A sweet new use for a “trash” tree

Oregon’s bigleaf maples may not be great for timber, but the common deciduous trees have another, previously untapped resource: syrup. Eric Jones, a professor at the Oregon State University Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, applied for a grant to help 30 Willamette Valley farmers get set up with the necessary tools to begin syrup production, OPB’s Kristian Foden-Vencil reports. It’s not just good news for the breakfast table, but it could also promote maintaining mixed forest stands instead of Doug-fir plantations.

Oregon baker competes with kooky cakes

The new season of the Netflix series “Is it Cake?”, which launches on June 30, features Beaverton-based baker Liz Marek cranking out hyper-realistic cakes for the chance to win $100,000. The idea of disguising foods to look like ordinary objects purely for novelty is not a new one, though — it goes back to at least ancient Rome, and by the mid-19th century cookbooks offered numerous suggestions for cakes decorated to look like a leg of mutton or a stuffed chicken.

Good things in markets

Cherries have arrived just in time for your 4th of July hand pies and George Washington’s 18th-century cherry bounce recipe (the cherry tree story may be a myth but the man knew his way around a tipple), and raspberries are now showing up with red currants. Otherwise, it’s the same-old, same-old: lush leafy greens (we just made a pan of pasta with kale and ricotta last week that blew our minds) and plenty of crisp-sweet radishes, carrots and snap peas for all manner of salads. If you’re on the hunt for strawberries, the Hoods and Shuksans have wrapped up, but reader Nora Marsh in Portland shared that Puget Crimson is not only just as flavorful, but you can pluck the hull off with your fingertips instead of needing to cut them out with a paring knife, making them a superior berry for jam making. “They are the lazy woman’s strawberry!” she reports.

Recipe: Cherry-almond crisp

Fun fact: Most of the foods we consider “American” aren’t actually from here. Apple pie? Try again — apples are from Kazakhstan. Hamburgers and hot dogs are both German (so is chicken fried steak, which is just schnitzel with country gravy). And on the other side of the coin, marinara and sriracha couldn’t exist without American ingredients; tomatoes and chiles are both from our side of the globe. The foods we hold as emblems of our national identity are kind of arbitrary, shifting with time to reflect the evolution of our cultures and our adaptation to an ever-changing world. So even though cherries are originally from around the same part of the world as apples, we can still hold them as symbols of our culinary heritage in the Northwest — not only does Washington grow the most sweet cherries in America (Oregon is third), but the Bing cherry was invented in Oregon. Here we’ve updated the classic American fruit dessert by adding black pepper and cardamom (a firecracker for your mouth!), but you can keep it traditional with cinnamon and vanilla if you like — just make sure to serve it with vanilla ice cream. Serves 6.

Ingredients

Filling:

2 lb sweet cherries (about 6 cups), stemmed, pitted, and halved

½ cup sugar

¼ cup corn starch

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp fine sea salt

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

¼ tsp ground cardamom

Topping:

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 cup uncooked rolled oats

¾ cup sugar

½ tsp fine sea salt

1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces (or grated on a cheese grater)

½ cup sliced almonds

1 tbsp sparkling sugar for topping (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. In a mixing bowl, stir the cherries together with the rest of the filling ingredients until the corn starch is dissolved. Pour the mixture into a 2-quart baking dish.
3. In another mixing bowl, stir together the flour, pats, sugar (not including the sparkling sugar), and salt for the topping. Using a fork or pastry cutter, mash the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles lumpy crumbs. Stir in the almonds and sprinkle the mixture on top of the cherries.
4. Sprinkle on the sparkling sugar (if using) and bake until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is golden brown, about 50-55 minutes. The fruit will sink in a little as it bakes, but if you’re worried about it bubbling over you can set the baking dish on a rimmed baking sheet to catch the drips.

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