Higher callings

First off, Andrea, you were right:

Black raspberries have two higher callings, and one is definitely, without-a-doubt, ice cream. Embarrassingly enough, I was actually very surprised to discover that when you make your usual ice cream recipe and add black raspberries, it tastes like black raspberry ice cream. This might not sound like a revelation, but somehow, it never occured to me that the purple color and distinctive flavor you find when you get black raspberry ice cream at the store might have actually come from a plant once upon a time. I always assumed it was sort of like blue raspberry popsicles—completely made up—not a rare, delicious find.

At any rate, now that I know, I have made two batches. Two! I will never doubt black raspberries again, or ice cream flavors, or any of you.

And speaking of you, I have something else to thank you for today. Thanks to your suggestions about how to make a homemade hummus, I've been spending a lot of time recently working on my black bean dip. The peppers are in, and the celery, and the carrots, and when they're this pretty, it only seems right to have something properly homemade to dip them into.

And so I'm proud to announce that based on your suggestions, I think I've finally come up with something worthy of the title Black Bean Hummus. The version I made today—the third version of a turtle bean, garlic, and sesame oil riff—I'm pretty sure is it. It's the simplest I've tried, and also the best. The key is the ingredients: good, cooked-to-creamy-mush black turtle beans from our CSA, fresh roasted garlic, chives from the back deck, and a glug of top quality sesame oil. That's it.

I've been eating it on carrots, and those lovely, sweet, purple-with-a-tinge-of-green peppers you see up there (from Matt's Organic Garden in Dennis). It's been magnificent. If I were you, instead of trying to turn on a burner or a stove—as a sort of survival tactic to Beat The Heat!—I would make a batch right now. And maybe some black raspberry ice cream, too.

I hope you're enjoying summer, everyone.

BLACK RASPBERRY ICE CREAM

The base for this ice cream uses no eggs, which I like because it means you hardly have to turn on the stove. Also, with the exception of the vanilla, this can be an all-local ice cream. I got our milk and cream from Paskamansett Farms, the honey from Mel Hammond down the street, and the black raspberries from our very own yard. Hip-hip, hooray!

1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup honey
2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups black raspberries, crushed
chocolate chips (optional)

Heat the milk and honey up over low heat in a small pot, stirring constantly. They don't need to get hot—just warm them up enough that the honey melts into the milk. Pour the mixture into a small bowl along with the vanilla and the cream, and chill for at least 2 hours. When the mixture is cool, pour it along with the black raspberries into an ice cream machine, and freeze/churn as directed. If you like, at the very last minute, stir in a cup or so of good, dark chocolate chips. Spoon the ice cream into a container and freeze for several hours before serving—the ice cream will be very soft when you first make it, and it needs this time to set.

BLACK BEAN "HUMMUS"

This is not so much a hummus as a black bean dip, but since black bean dips are usually more of a nacho/football thing and this is much more of a carrot/green pepper recipe, I think the hummus deserves its place in the name. This should last for at least a few weeks in the fridge, and is perfect as a summer veggie dip.

2 cups cooked black beans
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/4 cup chives, chopped fine
3 big heads garlic, roasted (that's a link to a roasting technique that works just as well with a toaster oven, so that you don't have to warm the whole house up)
salt to taste

Put the black beans, sesame oil, and chives into a food processor. Squeeze the soft roasted garlic cloves from the heads in, too, and puree. Season with salt to taste, and refrigerate.

Suddenly, abruptly

I left for a few days and like that—!—the black raspberries are in. Six foot high plants are reaching dark crowns toward the sky, plants that just last spring were transplants. They came from our friend Tracy's yard, from the patch that was overflowing from Dotty's yard into hers over the fence. We planted them in a neat, orderly patch with the goldens and the reds, and all summer long they struggled just to send out leaves, put down roots. They looked so scraggly I was going to pull them this year—and then—when I got home from Maine, they were suddenly, abruptly overflowing with fruit.

Funnily enough, I'd never had a black raspberry before the other day. I'd had black raspberry candies, of course, and black raspberry popsicles, but I'd never tasted the real, fresh thing. Once I did, I understood why: secretly, black raspberries straight from the plant aren't really our thing.

I have a feeling other people would agree. Black raspberries are different from the reds and the goldens—sweeter, with less flavor, and more artificial tasting somehow. The first day the bumper crop came in, Alex picked a quart, brought them inside, and then promptly declined to sprinkle them on his breakfast cereal. And so although my mother and I had just finished sealing the lids on 43 pints of strawberry jam, I waited a day, picked another two cups and a handful of lemon-thyme, and started again.


As it turns out, black raspberries are perfectly suited to jam. They crush easily, soak up the sugar, brighten with lemon-thyme and lemon juice, and thicken up fast. Like red raspberries they have a good amount of pectin, so you don't need to add chunks of apple the way you do with blackberries in order to get them to set. Their flavor deepens, mellows somehow, into something real, something solid, something good.

I think in fact, that if you were to look into it, you'd find that the higher purpose of black raspberries is jam. I think you'd find they're intended to be grown with lemon-thyme in sandy soil, and to move from the back yard to the kitchen together, under a hot, sticky July sun, filling quart after quart and jar after jar, again and again and again.

BLACK RASPBERRY & LEMON-THYME JAM

I made this recipe up, inspired by the lemon-thyme growing crazily, happily underneath the black raspberry patch. The two seemed like natural partners—and the finished jam confirmed that they do, indeed, go handsomely together. [One note: don't substitute regular thyme; it is a completely different beast.] This jam is all at once tart, flavorful, and sweet. It's the kind of thing you want to eat on toast, over yogurt, or maybe even folded into a batch of sweet corn ice cream. We'll see.

6 cups fresh black raspberries
1 tablespoon fresh lemon-thyme
4 cups granulated sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Combine the black raspberries and lemon-thyme in a large, non-reactive pot. Crush the berries using a potato masher and add the sugar and the lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat down to medium low and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes, or until the jam sheets off the spoon.

(When you first start cooking the jam, pull your spoon out and watch the way the liquid drips off of it. The drops will be light and syrupy at first. As the jam continues to boil, the drops will get heavier, and eventually, they will come together to form a fluid sheet as they come off the spoon. This is the setting point.

Another good way to keep an eye on the consistency is to put a small spoonful of jam on a plate every few minutes. It will cool quickly, and when it does, you'll be able to see how the jam, at this stage, will set.)

Keep watching or testing until you get the consistency you like, then turn the heat off. If you want to put up the jam, pour it into sterile jars and seal. Screw the lids on tightly and leave the jars upside down to cool overnight; be sure to check the seals in the morning before putting them in a cool, dark place.

Otherwise, put your jars in the fridge or give them away to very nice friends, and enjoy the jam at once, however you please.

Yield: about 4 cups plus a little bit of extra for eating fresh.