Last summer, I socked away a gallon-sized zip top bag full of handpicked blackberries in my freezer's ice bin (that side of the kitchen isn't plumbed, so we can't hook up the ice maker). Those berries have been there since August, a visual reminder that it was once summer and that warm weather really does exist.
Just about every summer, I manage to squirrel away at least one bag of fruit for winter use, be it peaches, blueberries or blackberries. However, every year, I waste an awful lot of mental energy trying to find the exact right time to actually use my frozen bounty. I finally broke down this weekend, using my berries to make a big, bubbly cobbler with a biscuit-y topping.
I'm curious, does anyone else struggle with using the foodstuffs they've frozen or preserved?
While I've never been one to turn down a piece of pie, I go positively bonkers over a good galette. There's something about the rustic, free-form nature of a galette that really appeals to my inner farm wife. I made my first one several years ago, with mediocre supermarket strawberries and dough that kept falling apart. Despite those challenges, brushed with a bit of milk and baked until golden brown, it exited the oven a delightful thing indeed.
I grew up eating wild Oregon blackberries, picked straight from the brambles. During my middle school years, we lived in a house that sat on about half an acre of land and had multiple fruit trees and loads of blackberry bushes. Those bushes were hugely thorny and picking the berries required long pants and sleeves and a willingness to sacrifice a bit of skin in order to come away with buckets of gorgeous fruit.
Seeing this berry makes me think of those days picking fruit. I've never been able to find anyplace on the east coast where wild blackberries thrive the way they do all over the Pacific Northwest.
Thanks Jill for adding your picture to the pool and giving me the chance to take a short blackberry-inspired jaunt through my memories.
Stone fruit is abundant right now, and while it's lovely to eat a peach, plum or apricot just as it comes, sometimes you get tired of simply eating the fruit out of hand. Cobblers, pies and jams are all fine and good, but sometimes, putting halved fruit on the grill is a simple and delicious way to finish off a barbecue (if you aren't grilling out, it's also wonderful to briefly saute up the halves in a little butter on the top of the stove).
Here Gillian has taken some ripe apricot halves and set them on the grill to soften them up and enhance those sweet fruit flavors. Yum!
I am not a pie person. I enjoy eating them, but I find the process of making crust, rolling it out and getting it into the pan more bother than I can really deal with. However, I happily embrace all varieties of crisps and cobblers because they are hugely easy and are a wonderful way to use all that great summer fruit.
Yesterday, I made the easiest cobbler ever. It requires just one bowl, one measuring cup and a baking pan. Butter your favorite baking pan and set it aside. Pour five or six cups of blueberries into a medium-sized mixing bowl and add a few cubed nectarines (not required, but very tasty). Sprinkle cornstarch, sugar, cinnamon and grated nutmeg over fruit and squeeze half a lemon in. Stir to combine and pour into the baking pan. Use the same bowl to mix up the biscuit-style topping (recipe after the jump) and spoon it over the top.
I took it to a cookout last night and it was the perfect finish to a meal of hamburgers, potato salad, grilled corn and fresh, garden squash.
This is more of a conceptual Feast Your Eyes post, as opposed to ones that just offer up the gorgeous food. You have to do a little more work here, imaging how amazing those raspberries looked, plump and rosy on their mildly thorny vines. I went blueberry picking yesterday, and was seeing the bushes laden with button-sized blue fruit for miles before I actually arrived at the farm. Happily, the reality of the berries in the field were even better than the image conjured in my mind's eye.
In a post that I wrote earlier this week, I mentioned that raspberries are currently in season. Raspberries are just one out of the many berries in season. I encourage you to taste the diversity of berries out there.
Last weekend, I tried fresh gooseberries for the first time. They're not like any berry I have ever tried. Their flavor ranges from bitter and sour to sweet. In just one gooseberry, I experienced a succession of brilliant aromas starting with sour green apples and ending with sugary grapes.
When eaten raw, make sure that the gooseberries are really ripe; otherwise, they will be too tart. In addition to eating them on their own, gooseberries can be the featured ingredient in plenty of dishes. Try these below:
Last week, my local produce market devoted an entire shelf of their display space to these pint boxes of fresh, local strawberries. They were selling for $3 a basket and I bought one (I wish I had gotten two or three more). When I got them home, I took them straight into the kitchen, washed a few and stood by the sink to eat the deep red fruit. The seeds were more assertive than those you find in those sturdy, pale California berries and while it was a surprise at first, I found myself enjoying the crunch, as it added a satisfying textural counterpoint to the fruit.
It seems like everyone is enjoying the abundance of berries right now. Over in the Talk section of Serious Eats, people are trading Strawberry Cake recipes. At Coconut & Lime, Rachel made Strawberry Thyme Cupcakes. Strawberry Kutchen is the dish du jour at Sunday Nite Dinner (the recipe is posted along with lots of tantalizing pictures). Or you could be like me and just chop up your fruit and eat it with yogurt and a drizzle of honey (only if the berries are tart).
What are your favorite ways to use fresh strawberries?
I was scanning my shelf of cookbooks tonight, when this one, the Complete Pie Cookbook leaped out at me. Being that we are approaching the end of the summer, the bounty of summer fruit is slightly overwhelming. Peaches, plums, nectarines and blackberries are cheap and gorgeous right now. Baking a pie is one good way of utilizing some of the summer abundance and make your friends and family happy at the same time.
The recipe after the jump is from a section called Peach Pies for Summer Suppers. The introduction to that section says, "Peach pie is a reward tired and hungry men who have worked late in the field trying to finish a job really appreciate. A cool evening and a peach pie are country joys to sample together."
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
Reality-Show Celebrities Serve Up Chef Curtis Stone's 'Hundred-Dollar Burger'
Foods Celebrity Chefs Hate
