Blackberry frenzy « There’s a hipster in my latte

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One of the great things about living in the Pacific Northwest is that every summer, right around the beginning of August, the landscape erupts with blackberries. I mean, the little buggers are everywhere: in vacant lots, in alleys, climbing out of retaining walls, in traffic circles, along every road. I’ve read that they’re comparable to kudzu in the South; crawling over everything like weeds, resistant to extermination.

If something has to be so pervasive, hey, at least it produces fruit. There’s really no reason to buy blackberries in the store or even the market, when I can take a bowl, walk around the block, and pick a good half-pint. My father said he went to a 5-foot swath south of the city, shook the branches, and enough for a pie literally fell into his waiting bowl.

Today I took a little stroll around my neighborhood and down to Greenlake and returned with, as usual, more berries than I knew what to do with. There’s a fine line when picking blackberries — you go from “hmm, will I find enough?” to looking down and realizing “holy crap I just picked three pounds of blackberries” rather quickly. Once you find a fruitful patch, you go into a blackberry frenzy, picking every plump berry in sight until you suddenly snap to reality and accept that you have way more than you need.

I decided to make free-form blackberry tarts, which is another way of saying I didn’t want to worry if they looked pretty. A good thing, too; these were, shall we say, “rustic” in appearance, though they tasted just fine – maybe a little more sugar needed to counter the tartness of the berries. Or vanilla ice cream on top would work as well.

I really do feel fortunate to have so much good quality fruit at my fingertips. We don’t have enough room for a garden, yet I’m still able to walk out the door and within minutes have ample fresh produce in hand. Seattle in the summer, to me, always means blackberry picking.

Free-Form Blackberry Tarts

(adapted from How to Cook Everything)

Dough:

1 1/8 cups flour
2 Tb. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
ice water
1 egg yolk

Filling:

approx. 2 cups blackberries (or could use another berry of your choice)
1-2 tsp. sugar, depending how sweet the berries are
1 tsp. cinnamon or nutmeg
2 Tb. melted butter

To make the dough, put flour, sugar, and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to blend. Add in the butter and pulse for about 10 seconds, until mixture resembles cornmeal.

Turn mixture into a bowl and sprinkle 3 Tb. ice water and egg yolk over it. Using a wooden spoon, gently mix until it starts to come together — you may need to add another half Tb. of ice water. When you can, use your hands to mold the dough into a ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap, flatten into a disk, and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Mix the berries with sugar and spice, but gently so they hold their shape.

When the dough is chilled, take it out and cut it into four pieces. Roll each piece out into a rough circle, about 1/8 inch thick. Place all four circles onto a baking sheet.

Put berries in the center of each circle of dough, leaving about an inch of dough from the edge. Fold up the edges around the berries so they’re tucked in, but don’t try to cover the berries with the dough entirely.

Brush the dough and the fruit with melted butter. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until fruit bubbles and the crust is golden brown.

Serve with powdered sugar, or vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream. If they look misshapen, just tell people that’s the idea.