Wild Blackberries.
Wild Blackberries.
Who can say no to free food?
Welcome to ingredient, where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on wild blackberries. Wild ones, that stain your fingers blood pink plucking them from the hedgerows rather than those fat, cultivated and usually monotone ones you’ll find in sterile plastic tubs in the supermarket.
For paid subscribers click here for my recipes for a Wild Blackberry & Bay Shrub, Blackberry Clafoutis and my Blackberry Toad in the Hole.
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I have long since argued that September marks the start of the culinary year. Yes we’re at the tail end of summer where the last of the courgettes and tomatoes (well, at least the ones that were not taken by this years terrible blight) are in full on glut-mode and we’re saying goodbye to the bounty of fresh produce that summer brings, but there is something about cooler nights, misty mornings across the fields, and the arrival of things like wild mushrooms and squashes as we move into autumn proper that always re-enthuses me back into the kitchen as if the slate has been wiped clean again after a long hot (or cool and wet, in the case of this year) summer.
For me, the very best of autumnal bounty that is out there is of the foraged variety: yes I will be heading out to gather copious amounts of sloes to make sloe gin and I’ll be hoping for another gift of damsons to make more jam, but nothing will ever, for me, eclipse the collection of wild blackberries.
I loved living in London, and I’ll wax lyrical for hours about the farmers markets I was lucky enough to shop at when I lived in Los Angeles, but nothing reinforces for me that I’m a country girl at heart than blackberry picking.
The hedgerows here in Kent are heavy with them, and up until I purchased my own house blackberry picking is always something my mother and I did together. When I was small, blackberry season marked the transition from plum crumble made from the Victoria Plum tree by the front gate (it had a crooked trunk from where my grandmother, never a confident driver reversed into it pregnant with my mother) to my Mum’s stunning apple and blackberry crumble - the blackberries always coming from the triangular walk along the road that fenced in our property, and when I was very, very small before the orchard in front of the house was landscaped the apples came from there too. And then, of course, there were all the blackberries that made it into our mouths on our daily walks every time we past the best spots of the brightest, juiciest berries.
There is just something about wild blackberries that give them a charm and a wild beauty their plumper, darker, more uniform cultivated cousins sitting sterile and pristine in their plastic supermarket tubs can’t ever obtain. Not only are they free to gather (do check you are allowed to do so on whichever stretch of hedgerow you find your bounty, and do also make sure you leave enough for others and for the local wildlife to enjoy!) but there is something magical about the ritual and atmosphere of going blackberry picking that I think makes wild blackberries more than just another ingredient.
Both times I moved to London I always timed a trip back home to go blackberry picking, taking plastic bags with us that we’d seriously overfill for jam making: I think this year is the year I will perfect my recipe as I think the last batch I made (September 2019, otherwise known as the before times, of which I have one single jar left) needed a hint more lemon as it is a touch too sweet.
Though, after a trip to my parents fruit cage last weekend, I do need to pause my soliloquy on the wonder of foraged blackberries to give a nod to the kind of cultivated variety you can grow yourself, rather than those mass produced varieties. This year from a single thornless Loch Ness variety cane grown espalier style1 they’ve grown so many they’re freezing them as they can’t keep up with their ripening, and while they don’t have that dusky variety of those smaller varieties found in the wild, they still have a depth of flavour that make them something worth producing: I’ve used them in tests for a few of this months recipes, and I’d feel amiss not recommending the practice to any gardener reading this with a bit of space to spare, especially if you live in the city far from ready foraging opportunities. Given a big enough pot, you can even keep a blackberry bush as a patio plant.2
Anyway, blackberries were always something we picked with purpose, staining our fingers purple and dodging the nettles and brambles to find the choice berries, knowing how we were going to use them on arriving home. So really, it is surprising that for an ingredient I love so much, I’d only really started thinking about other culinary uses for blackberries last summer when we moved into our first proper house together. The road running down the side of our property is full of blackberry brambles that barely anyone else touches, so now to fill up a bowlful it is just a matter of slipping out the back door.
Moving in on the last day of July, the end of summer 2020 was a busy one, and at first wild blackberries simply became the fruit I served alongside my flourless chocolate cake and a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream to guests who had come to help us sort out all the boxes and assemble our new furniture (while I’d hoped to leave flat pack behind me in my rental days, there is only so much you can do in a period cottage with a very narrow staircase!) But then, as the weather cooled and Covid cases started curbing our excursions away from the house once more, my foraged wild blackberries just outside the back door opened their own door of culinary creativity in what was at the time before our still ongoing renovation the poorest appointed kitchen I’d ever cooked in. Some of my experiments were failures - the blackberry and vanilla brandy I infused from an otherwise beloved German cookbook came out tasting like TPC - but others, such as the blackberry spoom3 is a dessert I will now be making from my wild blackberry stash year and year out.
While in my mind wild blackberries are definitively an autumn thing, for me down here in Kent where we enjoy warmer climes they actually start to appear around the start of August, and the very first thing I made this year which also happens to take pride of place as the first of this months recipes is a Blackberry & Bay Shrub. Shrubs - what are essentially drinking vinegars made by steeping fruit in sugar before preserving them with a hit of the tangy stuff - have long been a favourite of mine and this one has both the most stunning colour and flavour, really showing off a massive handful of wild blackberries at their best.
For the other two recipes I’ve included for paid subscribers this month I’ve turned to batter: you can tell that it has been a long, cold summer, right? First up, I’ve given the classic French clafoutis a blackberry makeover, keeping things simple without any other twists or flavours, because really, it is such a simple dessert that really lets the fruit do the talking and I did not want to mess around with it too much.
And, I’ve done something that some of you will believe is genius (me included) and others might consider heresy: I’ve made a Blackberry Toad in the Hole. As the person who saves my Yorkshire pudding until last every time we have roast beef and will happily demolish everyone elses, I adore a good Toad in the Hole with onion gravy, because it is basically one big Yorkshire pudding studded with sausages. And that got me thinking: the Americans don’t make Yorkshire puddings, but they make popovers which are similar but sweet, often featuring blackberries. And then I’d made a lovely dish of Baked Sausages, Apples & Blackberries with Mustard and Maple Syrup from Diana Henry’s book From The Oven To The Table on Saturday night, so why not drop blackberries into the batter before baking said Toad in the Hole?
For me, the result is glorious and I think represents both wild blackberries and autumnal eating at their best: little puddles of rich, inky sweetness in the midst of a both soft and crisp, golden batter with fat, juicy pork sausages. Oh, and I’ve made the recipe serves one so you can multiply it up to serve however many people you need to. Go on, try it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espalier
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/blackberries/container-grown-blackberries.htm
A frozen meringue based treat that tastes like a cross between sorbet and a sweetened cloud, and which is scoop-able the moment you pull it from the freezer.