Dig through & dig in

Our annual food-shopping moratorium is officially on. Does this happen at your house? You preserve and preserve and preserve, then worry so much about making it last that you face a freezer/pantry overflow crisis come March? Oy. It happens every year here, although I have a hunch it arrives at just the right time.

That is, in the sense that there isn't much local food shopping to be done these days. The carrots are all gone from the greenhouse, and the spinach is dwindling, fast. I am embarrassed to admit that because of a very late Fedco order, our spring seeds haven't even arrived yet! So perhaps the crisis is really a blessing in disguise.

At any rate, it yielded a blackberry-apple crisp, so it can't be all bad.

It was probably one of the easiest crisps I've ever made: a frozen homemade pie shell leftover from the day this winter that Alex and I tested clam pie recipes (21, to be exact!); wrinkled, shriveling apples that my mom brought down back in late January, soft but still good once we cut in; and blackberries from the freezer, picked in August at my brother and sister-in-law's, down the road.

I tossed the fruit with sugar, flour, lemon juice, and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg—then loaded it into the shell. The topping is one from my mother's recipe box—from a Pepperidge Farm piecrust sticker way back when. It has oats and brown sugar and walnuts, and of course plenty of butter to melt and ooze and hold it all in.

Blackberry-apple has always been a favorite of mine—ever since my mother started making this jam—but what do you have in your freezer? I have a feeling all sorts of combos would be good—apple-rhubarb? blueberry-cranberry? strawberry-pear? Dig through, and dig in!

APPLE-BLACKBERRY CRISP

Whenever I make blackberry jam, I always add bits of apple for pectin—a trick I learned as a kid from my mom (the extra pectin in the apples helps the jam set). I've always loved the flavor combination of tart apples and sweet berries, so when I found a bag of August-picked berries in the freezer the other day and a sad, too-soft-for-eating pound of apples in the fridge, I knew I had a crisp on my hands. This recipe is adapted from one my mom makes with apples and raisins. With vanilla ice cream, it's perfect.

for the filling:
4 cups sliced baking apples
1 cup blackberries, frozen or fresh
1/4 cup sugar
2-3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
a pinch of salt

one 9-inch pie crust, bottom only

for the topping:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup cold butter, cut into cranberry-size pieces
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, toss the apples and blackberries with the remaining filling ingredients. Spoon the filling into the pie crust.

In the same bowl, toss together all of the ingredients for the topping. Use your hands to sprinkle the topping over the filling, taking care to distribute the butter evenly (otherwise, certain areas of the topping will be dry while others are super wet).

Bake for roughly 35-45 minutes, or until the fruit is soft and juicy and the topping is golden brown. Pay special attention to the nuts, as if you overcook the crisp they will be the first thing to burn.

Itching to get back

I have a confession to make. Before I cooked for you this weekend, I hadn’t made a single thing, not one thing, for a week. Actually, I rounded down. Secretly, it was more like eleven days.

It was my official Spring Cooking Strike.

I don't know what came over me, but I felt awfully rebellious. The sun came out, the greenhouse warmed up, and I started itching to be outside. I went over to Cahoon Hollow to check out the waves, dreamt big dreams of orderly brick garden paths and neat picket fences and a brand-new raspberry patch, and frittered away a few lovely afternoons planting tomato seedlings and zucchini seeds and summer squash.

We made our way along with a big puddle of lamb shanks and sauce the fishmonger slaved over last Sunday (thank goodness someone was cooking), and some leftover sourdough bread and frozen carrot soup, and a few dinners at friends' houses. But by Friday, the jig was up. And to tell you the truth, I was itching to get back. I had a recipe for blackberry jam cake to try.

I found it in Carole Walter's book, Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins, & More, as part of my eternal search for the Wedding Cake. It was swirled with nutmeg and cinnamon, just a pinch of cloves, and almost an entire cup of thick, sweet jam. It sounded absolutely perfect for a jumping in endeavor.

It was. It helped with the pantry cleaning that's been going on around here recently—using up some jam, and a good deal of butter and flour and sugar and all that. Plus, it eeked the last drops from a jar of lemon extract, which went into an absolutely scrumptious glaze. It seemed somehow very spring: spicy, sweet, just barely hinting of sprouting grass and bare feet.

Plus, it's just mild enough to pass for a meal at breakfast or a snack come lunch or an after dinner dessert—an awfully important trait these days, when meals have been far and few between.

Happily, I think we may be past that. Or at least we will be, once I finish off this last slice of cake.

BLACKBERRY JAM SPICE CAKE

I think you could swap a cup or so of the all-purpose flour called for in this recipe for whole-wheat with excellent results, but I didn’t try it on the first go-round. Also, the original recipe called for seedless blackberry preserve, which is fine if that’s what you have, but I think chunky whole berries and seeds add far more character to the finished cake.

for the cake:

2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
3 large eggs
3/4 cup blackberry jam, preferably homemade
1 teaspoon vanilla

for the glaze:

1 tablespoon butter
2-3 tablespoons milk or cream
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch bundt pan; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, spices, and salt. Combine buttermilk and baking soda, and let side for about 5 minutes.

In a medium-size mixing bowl, cream butter with both types of sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then add blackberry jam and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately, mixing until just combined after each addition.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, using a spatula to clean the bowl and then smooth flat the surface of the batter in the pan. (It’s important to take the time to do this, otherwise when you flip your cake and place it on the stand, the bottom will be rounded and it will teeter around instead of sitting flat. Trust me; I found this out the hard way.)

Bake for about an hour, or until the cake starts to pull away from the edges of the pan and the top turns golden brown and begins to crack apart. Let it cool in the pan; in the meantime, melt the butter in a small, heavy-bottomed pot and mix in the other ingredients until smooth. If the icing doesn’t seem runny enough, add a bit more cream. Flip the cake onto a plate or cake stand, and drizzle the icing over it into a thin, ribbon-like pattern. Once the icing has hardened, enjoy with a cup of tea.

Birthday tartlet

We had one of those monumental birthdays in my house yesterday. I'll try not to give too much away, but it was a decade, a paragraph marker of sorts, the start of a new and shiny era—or so we like to say.

The transition is strange, between decades, even for the most excited of travelers. For ten years you linger on one side, suddenly to jump to another.

And so we made a birthday breakfast. There are few better ways to make the leap than with a fork in hand and an omelette in sight, and so we prepared our traveler with plate and feast for the day ahead.

My father made the eggs: big, fluffy clouds oozing cheese and veggies, tomatoes from the garden and spry, spicy scallions. My mother poured coffee and cider and ferried toast, while I worked away on a smaller surprise.

I had been hoping to make breakfast tartlets. There was a ball of dough tucked away in the fridge, waiting for morning and the jubilation of dawn. But by the time I got started, I was a bit behind. The table was set, eggs nearly done, and the oven just barely hot. Nonetheless I was determined to make one, at the least, to surprise the honoree and pass around in bites.

I sliced a peach and pressed the dough, forming it to the curvature of the tiny scalloped pan. The orange slices nestled close along the edge, and I spooned a bit of crumbled butter and blackberry jam over top. Just like that, it went in to bake. By the time we'd finished the eggs, it made an excellent coffee-side treat.

PEACH TARTLETS WITH BLACKBERRY JAM*

Makes 6, 4-inch tarlets or 1 large tartlet

Beat 1 stick butter with 1/3 cup sugar until creamy. Add 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1 egg yolk, and mix until uniformly combined. Stir in 3/4 cup white flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, mixing until there are no dry spots in the dough. Form into a ball and chill at least several hours, or overnight.

Press dough into large or small tart pan(s). Prebake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes, or until just firm. Slice 4 to 6 ripe peaches and layer over bottom. Top with 1 tablespoon blackberry jam per 4-inch tart or 8 tablespoons for a large tart. Bake 5-10 minutes at 350 degrees, or until fruit warms and softens slightly.

*Dough recipe adapted from Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food.

The gelatería: closing week

It is my deepest wish, one day, to open a gelatería.

I have harbored this hope for as long as I can remember. There have been defining moments, of course, when the dream has deepened: the first sip of my father's weekly chocolate milkshakes, the days I spent walking across Madrid from heladería to heladería in search of the perfect scoop, my summer as the ice cream girl sneaking Moose Tracks at Mac's Seafood.

But in my mind, the life of the shop has always remained a constant. It will be open summers only, from Memorial Day to Labor Day in the heat of the sun and the cool, hazy calm of evening. It will be surrounded by wire tables, carefully divided between sun and shade. Most importantly, it will be all about fruit.

The offerings will change with the seasons, ranging from gelatos to ice creams to sherbets to sorbets. Opening week will bring rhubarb, June strawberry, July blueberry, and August a medley of watermelon-raspberry. This week, it would be blackberry.

The blackberries near the marsh are in full swing now. They've ripened and deepened and the paths into the briars are well worn and beaten. Just the other day, I picked a gallon—a whole gallon!—in under a half hour. I mashed them up with a heap of sugar, poured in a splash of buttermilk, and let the ice cream machine do the rest. Seeds and cream churned into a deep violet perfection, and I could almost picture the first sold scoop.

Maybe next year.

BUTTERMILK BLACKBERRY SHERBET

Makes 2 quarts

In a large bowl, pour 2 cups of sugar over 4 cups of blackberries. Let stand 30 minutes, or until blackberries begin to juice. Add 2 cups buttermilk or sour milk, and mix well in a blender. Pour into ice cream machine and churn according to manufacturers instructions.

OR

If you don’t have an ice cream machine, put the mixture into a 9-inch square pan, cover, and freeze for 8 hours. Break frozen mixture into chunks and beat in a blender until smooth. Return to the pan, cover and freeze 3 hours or until firm.