Blackberry & Apple Crumble

Bramble & Apple Crumble is one of my favourite seasonal indulgences and fortunately, for a couple of months the primary ingredients are available for free, somewhere nearby. It is the quintessential September pudding, so I thought we should share our simple traditional recipe.

Ingredients

• Apples 4-5 large cookers (you can mix with eaters and adjust the sugar accordingly)
• Blackberries, probably about a mug-full.
• Flour 250g
• Rolled Oats 150g
• Natural Unrefined Brown Sugar 50g

Method

1. Peal & core the Apples then cut them into slices.
2. Lay the Apple slices into an oven-proof bowl. Then sprinkle on some Blackberries to form another layer. Sprinkle a small amount of Brown Sugar onto the fruit (not too much, you want to enjoy the sharpness of fruit, contrasting with the sweeter crumble). Repeat until the bowl is full to near the top.
3. Turn on the oven, 180 degrees Centigrade.
4. Now make your crumble topping by rubbing together the flour and butter in a bowl, then mix in the Rolled Oats and the remaining Brown Sugar according to taste.
5. Pour the crumble on to the top of the fruit. Poke it down with your fingers but make sure that it piles up proud of the bowl edge (it will sink down during cooking).
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Centigrade for 40 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Serve piping hot with cream / creme fresh / ice cream / custard, according to taste. If you somehow fail to consume this tangy treat in one assault, it is equally delicious cold the following day (for breakfast perhaps).

YUM!

Also, please take a few minutes to nominate me for #GetOutside champion email getoutside@os.uk with a few words explaining why Alan Gibson (aka the Urbane Forager) would be a great ambassador. Include links to this blog and your favourite pictures from here too. 

Oodles More Tasty Recipes in Here

Mulberry Madness

All Smiles at the Allotment

Mulberries are a gorgeously tasty sweet fruit and once you locate a tree, you will want to keep an eye on it and visit it regularly. The fruits sweeten as they darken and they will not all be ripe at the same time. 

Under the Mulberry Umbrella

Of course the darkest sweetest fruits, are also the softest and the blood red juice can tend to get everywhere and stain things, like fingers.

Guilty as Charged

We visited a favourite tree when on holiday in Devon. Then on our return to Sunny Southampton we picked a load off a local tree.  Before we entered the house again we checked the soles of our shoes (fortunately) and had to spend a while brushing the sticky berries off them, that could have made a dreadfully messy mess.

Come Back Next Week

The children they looked up a recipe for Blackberry and Apple Crumble, my favourite; we already had a load of Blackberries from the allotment. They used a mixture of Blackberries and Mulberries, along with some apples that we had picked earlier.

Tastes Better than it Looks!

I failed to take photos of the children cooking (probably a good thing in retrospect) but they actually did a fantastic job, rest assured the result was a feast for the taste buds. By the time did I remember the camera, there was barely anything left!

Blackberry Beginnings

For most of the year the bramble is seen as a cruel and invasive weed; it will grow almost anywhere, at an astonishing rate. It is capable of shredding clothing, piercing shoes and cutting soft skin to ribbons.

On our allotment there is a huge briar patch, which I thought needed taming. However, when I attempted to subdue the area and cut the brambles back with a scythe, it retaliated by growing massive stinging nettles, wrapped with bind weed. We have now come to a territorial agreement.

However, as August rears its sunny head and the school holidays arrive, people cease cursing the brambles, and start to talk fondly about Blackberry picking.

For many people the annual tradition of Blackberrying is as far as they get with foraging. For some though, it is only the beginning; the start of an exciting and multifaceted food-based adventure.

Blackberries always taste fantastic straight off the bush, they can be baked into an array of scrummy pies, cakes and puddings, and they make lovely Jams or Wine. If you don’t have the time for cooking right now, they can always be frozen and stored to use later in the year.

Bramble Bushes Bursting with Beautiful Big Blackberries

It’s that time of year again!

Big, fat juicy Blackberries are currently ripening on the commons, parks, hedgerows and gardens all over the place.

Most of the year Brambles are nothing more than a pain in the… Well, it depends on where they have snagged you really.

But come the hot and hazy days of Summer, especially during August the briers suddenly become our nation’s favourite plant.

Conveniently this splendid event occurs during the school holidays and wise families all over the country set out with suitable boxes and bags, often backed up with a picnics and bottles of drink.

They return later, tired and happy, smeared in juice, proudly displaying their battle scars of stinging nettle and thorn assaults.

The rewards are full boxes and bags, now bursting with berries, ready to be eaten, frozen or cooked into some delicious pudding or preserve. The best way to freeze blackberries is to lay them on a baking tray in the freezer, then transfer them into bags once frozen hard. This keeps the individual fruits separate and easy to apportion for future use.

What’s not to like?

Get out there now!

P.S.

It looks as if there might be a bumper crop this year of Hazelnuts and Walnuts some Hazelnuts are already ripe.

Squashed Blackberries!

During a quick visit to our shared allotment, the children soon picked and devoured the last of the Summer Raspberries and Blueberries, which had been safely tucked up inside the fruit cage. The Autumn Raspberries and Tayberry bush were looking good and strong and both needed tying to wire frames and stakes.

The real surprise though was the Squash plant, which had been busily growing all over the place. A quick rummage under the dense foliage exposed a couple of fat, weighty vegetables as well as several smaller versions and flowers steadily developing.

After a stint of weeding and cutting, I realised that the place had turned surprisingly peaceful; the children had vanished. I eventually found them delving about the boundary fence, their faces and hands smeared with so much Blackberry juice that I nearly phoned the emergency services.

I persuaded them to gather some to take home and supplied appropriate Tupperware boxes. True to form the kids quickly redeemed more from the hedgerows surrounding the plot than from our attempts at cultivation (I left the squash to fatten further).

We froze most of the sweet, shiny hoard for later on but as a reward the pickers had Blackberries and Bananas with Ice Cream for pudding that night. This is a dish I can wholeheartedly recommend and it makes a refreshing change from the old favourites of Blackberry & Apple pie/crumble; both of which I also find great pleasure in.

About this time of year, everyone should also be keeping their eyes open for Hazelnuts and Walnuts (id Sheet now updated), which will be ripening imminently.

The Lost Orchard Of Hedge End

When I wander around Hedge End during my lunch hours, I often locate new fruit trees.

Spring is the best time to find trees which may bear fruit later on. The blossom is beautiful and is associated deep within in our psyche with romance and rejuvenation.

I found an area in a local park that was quite literally swarming with apple trees. It must have once been an old farm orchard that has been forgotten. Last year I made quite a lot of cider out of these apples and kept loads for eating through the winter too.

Other people do use the trees that are near the carpark but my picker allows me to reach the higher fruits.

It’s great fun working out which apples are the tastiest and which will keep best during winter.

Generally, I find that the earlier fruits are softer and the later/hardest fruits keep best.

People often ask me if I know what the different varieties of apple are but I niether know nor really care. Maybe one day I will have enough free time to learn a bit more about naming the fruits but for now, I'm happy to locate, pick and use them. These are mostly eating apples.

There are a couple that look Russetty but they do not taste similar at all. Almost all of the fruits are good to eat.

These red / green stripy ones are the crunchy and sweet winners in my opinion. They also keep very well.

All of these different varieties of trees can be found in a public park within an area of about 100 meters. I'm pleased to see that other people do pick them a bit more now but there are a lot still left on the trees.

Never Trust A Golden Delicious

A couple of lovely poems on the subject of apples donated to the Urbane Forager by Shaun Keaveny and Murray Lachlan Young of BBC Radio 6 and prepared by Jack Howson.

Click on the picture of the apples and then download the file to your computer - I'll try to find a better way of embedding these little gems as soon as I can.


A Selection of Honest Apples from the Lost Orchard of Mansbridge

Thanks for making me smile boys.

If you are a mover or a shaker - please visit the new Campaign Page and get involved in the Campaign for a Community Orchard in Mansbridge.

Blackberry and Apple Crumble

This post needs very little description, so I'll keep it brief.

Just look at the picture and imagine the combination of textures, the smells, the hot steam rising.

This should be the first of many to come this year…

The apples came off the school tree and the blackberries from the waste ground opposite.

The First Blackberry & Apple Crumble Of The Year - Always a Treat

I always find the desire to eat Blackberry and Apple Crumble when it is still bubbling hot, almost irresistible; hence the dollop of crème-fresh.

It's just as nice cold though.

Ode to Blackberries

The school holidays are now in full swing. Consequently I have not so much time for writing or posting. Besides, blackberries are here early this year, so no one should have time to read it. Wherever you all are, you should be outside picking and eating blackberries right now.

Go Outside Now!

For some people blackberries are the start and finish of foraging - my hope is that between them and my blog, we can encourage more people to venture a bit further out into the fun world of free food. For now though, instead of me rambling about brambles, here are some poetic proclamations on the subject…

Eaten By The Handfull

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,
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.

Blackberry Flowers

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.

Yum - Starting to Ripen Now

Busy as I am, I can always find time to write a poem or lyric for you, so here is my own personal paean to these dark jewels of the hedgerow…

Blackberry Wine – by the Urbane Forager (2011)

Down the lane the Blackberries run.

The bittersweet pang, of your blood on my tongue.

Favourite flavours, temptation - too good

And it’s all staring down from the hedge by the wood.

You promised that you would not hurt me this time

Still the sting in my digits remains in the wine.

Always there is something about which to warn;

The hotter the sun, the deeper the thorn.

A worthy opponent, with briars to joust;

I want to crush you - to juice in my mouth.

In the green of the field, in the glare that can stun;

I long to pluck you - outside in the sun.

Your barb in my fingers, the pain in my palm

That stain it still lingers, your extract and balm.

Eden emergent, the edge of a stream,

Verdant the verge in the dark of the dream.

Juicy!

My own poetry, I couldn't possibly comment on...

What Do You Think?

Edit from August 30th 2013... 

Post dedicated to Seamus Heaney who  passed away on this day.

Lunchtime Lunatic

I'm quite sure that my work mates think I'm nuts, so here's confirmation for them...

Apple Trees

I popped out this lunchtime (on my bike) in an attempt to capture some of the variety and abundance of fruit in the area.

First Came The Apples

Apple Trees

I wanted to check on the local apple trees for progress and plum trees for picking.

Apple

I was not disappointed.

Apple

The apple trees looked just great.

Apple

They were loaded.

Red Apples

So many different types...

Green Apples

They taste just as different as they look.

Green Apple

Every apple pip that grows, will result in a new and interesting variety of apple tree.

Green Apples

Which is a very good reason to experiment.

Red Apples on a Branch

Then came the plums.

Red ones.

Plums

Cherry like ones.

Yellow Plums

Purple grape like ones with a dusky bloom.

Purple Plums

Very jucy yellow/greengages that burst in your mouth.

Greengages

Firm fleshed speckled ones.

Speckled Plum

A veritable cornucopia.

Peachy Plums

How long did it take me to take all these photographs and sample the plums?

Yellow Plums

Half a lunch hour!

Cherry Like Plums

The cherries have mostly finished now but there was a similar variety and amount here last month.

Traditional Plums