Blueberries aren't just for pies anymore

BALTIMORE - Think blueberries, and you think pie.

But these blue beauties are ready to break out of that familiar lattice-topped role. Home cooks and professional chefs alike have found the berry's not-too-tart, not-too-sweet flavor lends itself to many savory uses.

At Clementine restaurant in Hamilton, Md., chef and co-owner Winston Blick uses the fruit in a blueberry-basil salad vinaigrette, in a jammy compound butter served on pork chops and in a side dish of sautéed greens and house-cured bacon. They even turn up in the restaurant's paté.

"For some reason, it works well with the savory or salty things," Blick said. "The part of the blueberry pie that's great is the blueberry (filling) with the salty crust."

He described blueberries as "well-balanced," meaning they are neither super-sweet nor super-sour.

"They don't punch you in the nose," he said. "So it goes with things."

Like chicken livers, believe it or not.

Blick incorporates dried blueberries that have been macerated in a Boordy Vineyards berry wine into his buttery, silky paté.

(It might not quite qualify as health food, but it's high in iron and still better than pie, right?)

"You get that little burst of fruit, and it's just lovely," said his wife and business partner, Cristin Dadant.

Restaurant patrons sometimes are surprised to see blueberries show up outside the dessert menu. No one blinks at the blueberry double-layer cake with lemon butter cream, prepared by the chef's mother. But the blueberry-bacon butter listed with the pork chop?

"People come in and say, 'Blueberry-bacon butter?' And I'll say, 'Just try it,' " Dadant said.

The blueberry-bacon butter in question came about when Blick was looking for a fruity topping for pork. The sweet-toothed chef created a jammy concoction. His cooks pushed it in the direction of a compound butter. Eventually, he said, it "found its true place between the two."

The vivid color of the cooked berry in savory dishes puts off some people.

"It looks like a crime scene" is how Baltimore food blogger Kathy Patterson described the blueberry ketchup she developed last year for a recipe contest sponsored by the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council.

Still, she would make it again for use in a blueberry barbecue sauce she cooked up for shredded pork shoulder.

"Blueberries have their own intrinsic spice when you cook them up," said Patterson, who blogs about recipes and local restaurants at minxeats.com. "They have their own zing."

Jerry Edwards, owner of Chef's Expressions Catering and Consulting, is not a fan of the color, either.

"Blue is not a good food color," he said. "It's a gorgeous color, but not to eat."

That said, Edwards makes a blueberry-onion marmalade that he serves over lemon grilled chicken. In that dish, the berries are combined with caramelized onions, resulting in a color he finds more appetizing.

"You're really putting a brown and blue together, and you're getting sort of a ruby color," he said.

Blueberries are one of those good-for-you foods that taste good to most people, so they don't have to be snu

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