The Dinner Files

My plan was to use the sour cherries – something I never ever see in California – I bought at Clancy’s in Minneapolis and use the rest of the insane amount of blueberries my parents had brought up to the cabin and make scads of turnovers. These turnovers would be gorgeous and delicious and I would distribute them amongst our kind neighbors here at the lake – some of whom coughed up some Benadryl and Benadryl cream when my son got stung by a bee and others of whom are just jolly welcoming folks to whom I find myself driven to give turnovers.

So I made two batches of pie crust, tossed fruit with sugar and flour, and started rolling out circles. It ended up being 14 circles – six sour cherry turnovers and eight blueberry turnovers. Here’s the thing. Whether browning meat or rolling out pie dough, I like to take it to the limit. The limit is where really good stew becomes mind-blowing, where a nice pie becomes sublime. The thing with the limit, though, is it is the actual limit. Go beyond it and… things fall apart quickly. Good meat is burned. Perfectly ripe fruit boils into a mess of crust-less nonsense.

I went too far. I reached for the sun and my wax wings melted. That turnover dough wasn’t strudel-thin, but it was too thin for turnovers. Once in the hot oven the fruit just burst right out of those weak little casings and bubbled into a sticky, almost-burnt raft on the pan. The turnovers were still edible, but much of the juicy essence of the fruit ended up soaking in the sink.

They tasted fine, but only a few looked remotely gift-able. (The skillful use of a knife to cut off the burnt fruit dripping out of the sides saved the ones below for their photo shoot.) The Benadryl-giving neighbors (hey Rollins!) ended up with a turnover apiece. The other neighbors (hey Carlsens!) will get something nice soon. I have plans. Big plans.

Sour cherry turnovers

The sour cherries were awesome in these. Use any fruit you like, though, just cut the sugar back by about a third for fruit that isn’t mouth-puckeringly sour. This recipe makes six not-too-thin turnovers; increase at will if you have the gumption to roll out the dough.

1 recipe pie dough (for a one-crust pie)

1 pint sour cherries

1/3 cup sugar

a scant 2 tablespoons flour

Make the pie dough, divide it into 6 pieces and pat each piece into a 1/2-inch-thick disc. Wrap in plastic and chill at least an hour and up to 2 days.

Preheat oven to 350. Pit cherries. Have a large baking sheet ready. In a large bowl toss the cherries, sugar, and flour until some juice from the cherries and the sugar and flour form a sort of wet sandy mixture around the cherries.

Roll out each disc of dough into a 5- to 6-inch circle. Put 1/6 of the cherries on half of each circle, fold the dough over the fruit to make a half-moon shape, and crimp the edges. Put turnovers on the baking sheet, cut a vent or two or three in the top of each turnover, and bake until fruit filling is bubbling and the crust is the color of a wooden cutting board, about 50 minutes. Let cool.

Eat with coffee. I find they really taste best at breakfast. Turnovers are, after all, the original Pop-Tart.

Will you read more about blueberries? What if I promise not to talk about deer? How about if I just remind you how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker? This blueberry ice cream is as easy as the old-fashioned just-cream-and-sugar-and-fruit types of ice cream but with the rich mouth-feel of fancier cooked custard ice creams. How is that possible? I’ll tell you: sweetened evaporated milk.

Not only does this canned wonder make iced Vietnamese coffee all that it can be, but it also sweetens and gives body to this super easy fruit ice cream. I used blueberries for this batch, but it works with all berries as well as peeled and chopped ultra-ripe peaches. Go forth! Freeze!

Blueberry ice cream

Use any fruit you like here – or add chocolate chips or crushed cookies or just leave it vanilla – just give it a try, with or without an ice cream maker. The best results I’ve had were with the dairy listed below. Feel free to try some other combination (2 cups cream and 1 cup milk, for example) that equals 3 cups of liquid dairy. Be warned: if you choose to make it without any cream the texture will necessarily be more icy than creamy.

2 cups half-and-half

1 can (14-ounce) sweetened condensed or evaporated milk

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 – 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (less vanilla will make it more singularly blueberry flavored, more adds more complex flavor to the final ice cream)

2 cups picked over perfectly ripe and lovely blueberries

In a large bowl combine the half-and-half, condensed milk, cream, and vanilla. Freeze in an ice cream maker or use the no ice cream maker method.

Meanwhile, rinse the blueberries. Mash them with a fork or whirl in a blender or food processor.  I like to leave the berries just a bit chunky so there are bits of fruit in the ice cream, but you can puree them as much as you like.

When ice cream mixture is at that lovely soft-serve texture, add the mashed or pureed blueberries. This will un-freeze the mixture slightly, so you’ll need to continue whatever freezing method you’re using. Why add the blueberries towards the end? It keeps any bits and chunks of fruit from just floating to and staying on the bottom.

When the mixture is re-frozen to soft-serve texture or firmer, transfer to a container you can keep in the freezer, cover or seal, and freeze until firm.

I was woken up the other night by the sense that someone was looking at me. I raise my head and looked out the screen door to see what at first scared the living lights out of me: a large, tall man standing outside my bedroom door.

My immediate terror made me look harder, secure in the knowledge that I could see out and he couldn’t see in. I sucked my breath in in amazement and relief when I realized it was not a man at all, but a towering buck deer making his way along the path that leads from the front of the cabin to the back.*

Then I got mad. If he was walking from the front of the cabin that means he most likely had been down on the point. If he had been down on the point that means he had been, unless he was a complete fool, eating the wild blueberries that grow there. Tiny miracle fruits I think of as mine.

I’ve only found three ripe ones this summer – I ate one, I gave one to my son, and I gave one to my best friend from high school who drove through 95-degree heat without air conditioning in holiday traffic to come visit me (and all she got was a single blueberry!). Everyday I go down. Everyday the ones that looked like they’d be ripe that day are gone. Eaten by deer.

And then the deer has the unmitigated gall to wake me from a sound night’s sleep and scare the crap out of me?

I’m trying to keep a healthy perspective and not get too angry at the wildlife for eating, but it’s a trial. I mean, there is plenty of stuff in the woods deer like to eat, right? I only want the blueberries. Okay, okay, I want the raspberries too. But everything else – seriously everything else – the deer can have. I’d even be willing to put out non-woods food for them if I thought it would make a difference. Carrots? Greens? Hot fudge?

As I dream of enough wild blueberries to even bother balancing on a scoop of ice cream, I used cultivated ones (such a sad, lesser product!) to make this tart my lovely talented friend and neighbor made for me a year ago. Rather, she made a tart much like this, gave it to me, apologized for it not being perfect, and I thought to myself that while it had been left in the oven a tad too long that I didn’t mind that as much as many people might and that I must remember to recreate it because it was such a brilliant idea. I don’t know where she got the idea or recipe. I added a bit of ginger and put on more jam than that original, I believe, and the people loved it.

I made it at our family cabin for an appreciative group. I made only a single mistake. I forgot that there isn’t a food processor at the cabin. Not a single one. So the super-quick crust was a tad more involved that I had planned. The upside to this, of course, is that any aggression or frustration I might have felt that day got worked out on the crust, not my family and not the deer.

Fresh blueberry and jam tart

Fresh berries are layered onto a jam-topped graham cracker crust. Easy peasy. And crazy tasty. The ginger in the crust is optional, but terribly delicious.

12 whole graham crackers

3 – 4 tablespoons chopped crystallized or candied ginger (optional)

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons melted butter

1 egg white

1 jar (about 13 oz but don’t worry too much a bit this way or that) blueberry jam

2 cups fresh blueberries

Heat an oven to about 350. Put the graham crackers, ginger, sugar, and salt in a food processor and pulse until completely crumbs. With processor going, pour in the butter and then the egg white. You should have a sandy mass that sort of wants to stick together most of the time.

Note: this can also be done using a heavy resealable plastic bag and a rolling pin. Or, if you find yourself without a rolling pin either (!) the bottom of a heavy pan, rolled around and down, will, eventually, do the trick to make the crackers even crumbs. You will need to mince the ginger before you add it and the butter and egg white are best mixed into the crumbs with your hands.

Push the mixture into a tart pan or, if, like me, there is no tart pan where you are, simply work it into a 1/4-inch thick shape (square, round, star – whatever works for you!) on a baking pan or cookie sheet.

Bake until the crust is set, about 15 minutes.

Spread tart with jam and return to oven to lightly set the jam a bit, about 5 minutes. Remove and let cool so the jam is a bit more sticky. Top with fresh blueberries. You can be as fussy or unfussy as you like about this. As you can see above I decided to make it all very neat and put the blueberries, one by one, in crazy-pants rows. Halfway through even I got really bored with that and dumped the remaining berries on the second half willy-nilly.

Judge the difference for yourself. The dumped ones need to be moved into a single layer, which means some will have jam on the top or sides. If you can live with that, I highly recommend spending that 10 minutes you just saved having a drink before the guests arrive. Or reading a few pages. Or staring at the ceiling and listening to the quiet.

Let the tart cool and set a bit more before you serve it. You can keep it covered, at room temperature, all day (or at least I did that and the texture was great). Something creamy is divine – whipped cream, for example – but something creamy and frozen is even better. Yes, I’m talking ice cream. Frozen yogurt works too.

* My son would contradict that statement with his own view of things: there is no back and front to the cabin. There is garage side and lake side. Let it be duly noted.

I owe many thanks to a good friend. She visited Ernest and me in northern Minnesota this past weekend and gave us two incredible gifts.

First, in response to me saying that it was too bad we didn’t have an ice cream maker or I would make her some of the awesome buttermilk ice cream I’ve been obsessed with, she told me she makes ice cream all the time with a bowl and a whisk (and a freezer, of course). So I gave it a try. OMG. Why do I own an ice cream maker? Why do I make space for it in my limited storage space? It worked great – just pour the cooled mixture into a large metal bowl, cover it, and whisk it up every 20 minutes or so until it’s ice cream. Side-by-side I’m sure ice cream maker-ice cream would be smoother, but without direct comparison, an ice cream-lover would find nothing lacking in the results of this low-tech method (which I wrote up step-by-step at Local Foods).

Second, she got Ernest into the idea of building a fort in the woods. Yesterday afternoon I went to the site with Ernest and something small, blue, and low to the ground caught my eye. There weren’t many of them, but they were delicious.

“Mama,” Ernest said as he crammed his tiny haul into his mouth, “the blueberries from the store are bigger, but these taste better.”

True that.