The challenge: Feeling healthy enough to cook. I'd gotten another spring cold from walking in a cool, damp rain. After deciding James was cooking on Wednesday, I made simple chicken fajitas on Thursday. Having bought some blackberries fresh on the Friday or Saturday before, I decided they needed to be used soon. Fortunately, this was not a three hour dish. I also cheated with this recipe and picked up some frozen blackberries as I wasn't sure I had quite enough for this recipe.
So as I was making dinner, I began the berry prep and halved the recipe first off, I didn't have 4 full pints of blackberries, and there are only two of us. The standard recipe serves six to eight people. So I popped in two pints of blackberries, sugar, a little cornstarch, and a teaspoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice. I've bought so many lemons, I think its just habit to walk into the store and pick up a lemon and pop it in the cart.
Once the berries were tossed and mixed with the juice thickener, I popped them into a 375 degree oven and let them cook for 15 to 20 minutes. Then I began the pastry dough, all while subjecting James to a favorite old movie from high school that I had watched previously that week, _Used People_. You should like romances if you run out and rent this movie, or add it to your Netflix queue. For the biscuit part, I included flour, baking powder, salt, some cold unsalted butter and mixed with my hands until I formed course crumbs. I'm finding my hands work best for this, but I do not have a pastry blender to try, and I find I prefer to just get in there with my hands. Once I got to the coarse crumb texture I added some buttermilk and homemade vanilla(whiskey cured vanilla bean) and formed a dough, which I then rolled out and cut into rounds using a ramekin, it was handy and close to recommended two and a half inches.
When the berries were juiced and ready from the baking, I added the biscuits to the top and returned the dish to the oven for about 25 to 30 minutes. After a few moments of letting the berries cool (15-20), I served them up in bowls and James thought they were good enough to take the entire dish home. He settled for seconds. I was kind enough to share the leftovers with him the next night for dessert.
It is still a little early for blackberries though, so they were a little tart, but I think I found that even in the frozen ones. I will definitely make this recipe again. I expect it will be with fresh blackberries and raspberries hand-picked from my backyard. James also put in a request for a blueberry recipe of this later in the summer. I have a strong feeling we'll be seeing this recipe again and often during the summer, though I've yet to update the Rhubarb-strawberry crisp and will play with berries in that recipe as well. It could be fun summer of berries;-).
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