A Berry Pie Round-Up for the 4th of July

I'm not always the most patriotic person. Lately I've been pretty heartbroken and confused about the state of our country and it's hard to feel like we've really made progress in dismantling institutionalized racism and injustice. But there have also been real sparks of hope: Marriage equality. Bree Newsome. Obama's "Amazing Grace."

Sometimes food-- not to mention food blogging (and about pies no less)--in the context of all of this can feel trivial and frivolous. But food can also be that glimmer of hope, a reminder of our culture and people power. It's sustenance to ground us in place, a reason to gather, something for the hands and body to do while the mind is reeling.

This fourth of July will be a space to think about it all-- the contradictions, the tragedies, the successes. A good time to catch up on some reading and writing, share some food with friends, celebrate the progress we've made as a country and think about what's next.

Here's a round-up of some berry pies and desserts from this blog and other favorites for your holiday gatherings. I'm not sure what I'll whip up this weekend, but I'm planning to let the berries lead the way.

Blueberries
Blueberry Buckle
Blueberry Hand Pies
Blueberry Icebox Pie
Blueberry Shortcakes with Whipped Cream Cheese
Plum and Blueberry Galette

Raspberries & Blackberries
Berry Tartlets
Lime & Raspberry Italian Meringue Pie
Peach Blackberry Cobbler
Peach Blackberry Pie
Wild Blackberry Lemon-Goat Cheese Tart

Strawberries
Pickled Strawberry Piescream Sandwiches
Strawberry Creme Tart
Strawberry & Fresh Cheese Tart
Strawberry Icebox Pie
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Mixed Berries
Berry & Apricot Galettes with Saffron
Berry Cobbler
Campfire Skillet Crisp
Currant Syrup, Switchel, and Gooseberry-Black Cap Pie
Gooseberry-Apricot Pie

Eating Our Words: A Progressive Dinner

As I previously mentioned, this spring at NELP I taught a Food Writing Society to a wonderful group of five talented women. The final project of the society was to create a culminating event that would allow us to share our work with the rest of the community. We wanted to convey the principles of our class-- that food is a language and that exploring the foods of our required authors (Thoreau and his beans and bread, Sarah Orne Jewett and the pies in The Country of the Pointed Firs, Wallace Steven's "Study of Two Pears," etc.), informs our reading of the text as well as our "reading" of the food. We also wanted to communicate our belief that food is an important foundation for intellectual thought and writing, and can be a symbol for relationships, identity, history, and culture. At NELP and in many of the communities that we inhabit, food is the nexus of social life.

With these goals in mind, we collaboratively developed a progressive dinner, "Eating Our Words," that would allow us to recreate and share the foods of our authors in different settings around Camp Kabeyun. We started with chowders, beans, and bread in the dining hall, and via a map, lead everyone on a self-guided eating tour. 

There were stops at the herb garden for a sampling Alymer's elixirs, from the Nathaniel Hawthorne story "The Birthmark," a recreation of Phoebe's kitchen from Carolyn Chute's novel Merry Men, a half-bushel of cornmeal-- weekly rations for four slaves, which Frederick Douglass writes of in his Narrative, and pickles on the dock as per the Lloyd S. Barrington poem, also from Merry Men. It all culminated in the Bowden/NELP family reunion, inspired by Country of the Pointed Firs, with pies and Emily Dickinson's coconut cake, and a reading of the student's work.

Though we had to change some plans due to windy and rainy weather--we had wanted to have our "doughnut island" on the floating dock (mostly to see who would swim for a doughnut) and our Family Reunion in the meadow-- the dinner was wonderful and left me inspired and full. I think we met our goals of prompting others to consider the importance of food in literature and our own lives.


I was so impressed and thankful by the work of the society members-- Abby, Ariella, Brooke, Emily, and Madalyn. They put in a lot of time and hard work in the kitchen and the typewriter to pull it all off. In the words of Sarah Orne Jewett, "The feast was a noble feast," with "an elegant ingenuity displayed in the form of pies, which delighted my heart."

 

Bruiseberry Pie

The lattice is a little wonky, because I was getting tired and impatient, compromising refrigeration time.

I took a trip to Lewes, Delaware last weekend to meet my dear friends' Mandy and Greg's baby Juniper, and hang out on the beach with the Fischer family. Katy and Lanny picked up some blackberries and blueberries at the farmers' market, and after a full day of SPORTS (kayaking, ocean swimming, bay floating, biking, and tennis), Artie and I made what I call a bruiseberry pie, with black-and-blue- berries (mostly black).

Here's the approximate recipe:

Bruiseberry Pie

Ingredients
Nothing-in-the-house pie crust recipe
5-6 c. fresh blackberries 1 c. (or a handful) fresh blueberries
1/2 c. white sugar  
1/2 c. brown sugar  
2.5 Tblsp. corn starch (or arrowroot)
pinch of salt  
2 tsp. lemon zest
1-2 tsp. ginger zest  
2 tsp. lemon juice  
1 egg (for washing)
Turbinado sugar (for dusting)

Directions
1. Follow instructions for pie crust preparation. Once crust has chilled, preheat oven to 425 F. In a large bowl, mix berries with sugars, corn starch, salt, zests, and lemon juice and set aside.

2. Roll out 1/2 pie crust and place into 10-in greased and floured pie dish. Pour filling into crust. Roll out top crust and cut into lattice strips, using a ruler for uniform width strips (if desired). Weave lattice and flute crust. Brush on an egg wash and dust with Turbinado sugar. 

3. Bake for 10 minutes at 425 F, then reduce heat to 375 F and bake for 35-40 minutes longer or until filling starts to bubble and crust is golden brown.

With this pie, we inducted a new member into the PEZ: plate lickers club, though Lanny said she comes from a long line of plate and bowl lickers.

Lanny carries on the plate licking tradition

Thanks to the Fischers for the lovely weekend!

3 Nights of Blackberry Desserts

During my last week at Rokeby, Howie discovered a plentiful blackberry bramble behind the white house. It was probably the most fruitful berry patch I have ever foraged from, and the fruits of our labor yielded 3 nights of blackberry desserts. First we enjoyed a blackberry-ginger cobbler.
For the biscuit topping I used a recipe for "Yankee Biscuits" I got from Clara. It is as follows:
Yankee Biscuits
3 c. flour
2 Tblsp. sugar
2 Tblsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 stick cold butter
1 1/2 c. cold milk

Combine dry, cut in butter until consistency of cornmeal & peas. Add milk, stir gently. Place on floured board and knead 14 times. Roll out into 1-inch. Cut and bake for 15 minutes in 425 degree oven.
I just rolled out the biscuit topping, and placed it on top of the blackberry filling, which I had poured into a cake pan. We enjoyed it a la mode, after Louis' delicious fish stew. The second night, I made a blackberry rustic tart, topped with Sam Comfort's honey from Anarchy Apiaries. It was basically a pie with a thrown-together/less-artful crust. And for the last night and a Big House-Yellow House Cookout with guest Diane Cook, I made a blackberry-ginger pie, washed with a brilliant orange egg from the hens of Shoving Leopard farm. The fillings of all three were riffs on the recipe used here, with ginger or honey added. Eggwashed and baked, with a poem...
Blackberry Pie
by Jennifer Rae Vernon

is kernels of juice
blue, mom makes it do
magic heat to vanilla ice cream
purple dream

there were many nice things,
the corduroy pinafore
the daily notes in lunch sack
of a smiley face and curly cue hair
your mama loves you, and do great
with a thermos of homemade soup

dad too, he rocked me on front porch
after seven yellow jacket stings
i howled through the valley
in baking soda paste
while he sang, in the big rock candy mountain...

but just like grandma vernon always said
don't bother doing anything nice for your children
they'll only remember the bad things, anyway
like when she tethered my dad
to the front yard tree
so he could play when she was at work

was that bad? a ruined childhood?
bless her heart
and pie too, is sometimes
tart

Christmas Eve blackberry.

It was a bitterly cold day in the thumb of Michigan--perfect for pie baking!

A lesson from mother (Chief Pie Expert in Residence) to son (Apprentice in Overalls).



First, she modeled.



Then, she provided guided instruction. (You can tell
that the teacher in me is ridiculously excited by this process!)


Then the Apprentice in Overalls tried his hand at some independent practice.


A beautiful blackberry pie, complete with traditional
design used for years by the Chief Pie Expert in Residence.


A delicious process to be taught and practiced for generations to come.

Blackberry: Picking. Eating. Pie

Blackberry-picking
by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

On Sunday afternoon Julia and I ventured down to _____(undisclosed location) to pick blackberries. On the way, we were distracted by a small patch of beautiful pink thimble berries! We picked a few and then made our way to the blackberry patch, where there was an immense cache of berries--plump and DRIPPING off of the bushes! The picking was INTENSE--with recent heavy rains, the mosquitos are attacking in swarms and droves. We wore long pants and long sleeved shirts buttoned up to the top button (both for the thorns and the bugs), and slathered ourselves with bug balm, but it was not much use. To be able to stand it, we had to be entirely intent on the picking, not even allowing ourselves to be distracted by jokes or chit chat. We needed stamina, focus and determination. Julia compared it to the Olympics (Berry Picking: London 2012!). But we battled through the bugs, heat and impending thunderstorm, and walked away, scratched and bitten, but triumphant with 7 yogurt containers-full.

Blackberry Eating
by Galway Kinnell
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched or broughamed,
many-lettered, one syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry eating in late September.

Once I got home, 2 of the containers were immediately washed and of course, prepared for pie.

I adapted the filling recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Blackberry pie recipe in The Pie & Pastry Bible. 

Blackberry Pie
Ingredients
Nothing-in-the-House pie crust
7 c. FRESH blackberries
3/4 c. white sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
2.5 Tblsp. arrowroot (thickener)
pinch of salt
2 tsp. lemon zest
pinch ginger
2 Tbslp. lemon juice

Directions
1. Prepare Nothing-in-the-House Pie crust as per the directions.

2. Mix sugar, arrowroot, salt, lemon zest, and ginger. Then add lemon juice and berries.

I had some leftover pie-crust dough (whole wheat) in the fridge, which I used for a nice, yet incomplete, lattice top. This was my first time using arrowroot as a thickener, and I like its effect. It doesn't leave behind any taste and is more 'natural' (less processed) than corn starch. Next time I might use a little more as the pie was rather runny:



SP came over with vanilla ice cream, along with Mandy, Graham, Julia, and Katy. We had some snacks (ginger tea, cucumber-olive salad by Mandy, tomato chutney and rhubarb-ginger jam by Julia) and then entered the Pie Enjoyment Zone.

SP, Julia & Graham in the PEZ

Katy in the PEZ & Mandy in the non-PEZ/COSPEZ.

After the pie, we headed to the Firehouse for the Greg Davis & Eric Chenaux show, which was really lovely-- if you were to think of what the appropriate music would be to depict the blackberry poems above, this might have been it.