Week Thirty-Five: Fruits

The original title of this was “A return to week twenty-six” but the theme of this week actually suited just as well. In week twenty-six, foraged week, I said there are exactly two things I know how to safely forage and neither of them were seasonally available at the time (and then went on to have the carrageen moss disaster, but the less said about that the better)? Well, blackberry season is here…

I spent a bit of my childhood being raised by my grandmother, who was a wonderful person who didn’t really get how the world works. She didn’t realise I was old enough to be in school; instead of being in school she taught me her own wisdom, so I became a child who could identify pretty much any woodland tree and who knew a lot of different embroidery stitches, but who had no idea how to play playground games with other children. I didn’t get on well with other children, but I could make a mean sampler. Blackberry picking was one of the joys of late summer and autumn, we’d gather them on countryside walks and then use them in jams, muffins and pies. I still enjoy doing it, and I’m pleased to live somewhere where a five minute walk gets me into the country and amongst fields. And the countryside is plentiful, a single morning walk yielded two tubs of blackberries, and I followed the rules of foraging, namely it shouldn’t look like you’ve been there - take one or two, don’t strip the plant. 

This gave me a chance to test out something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I said in vegetable week that I’m looking towards autumn and winter, but with my preference for fresh ingredients I’m starting to consider how to continue this in the less plentiful times. There are various ways to preserve fresh foods, and they could then be incorporated into ice cream; particularly Nutt used jams which are excellent at preserving, they are part of the foods literally called preserves. My one attempt at using jam in ice cream didn’t work out too well and does warrant more testing, but I’m interested in a different method that wasn’t easily available to the Gunter’s confectioners: freezing. Namely, can you juice a fresh fruit, freeze the juice and then thaw out and use it as you would have used the fresh juice? With so many blackberries, this seemed like a good opportunity, I could juice and squeeze one tub, make one fresh and directly compare the two.

Blackberry ice cream

This follows the same instructions as my new fruit ice cream standard, just replace the kiwi juice with blackberry juice; in my case, I juiced the blackberries and then froze the juice before defrosting it and using it as normal.

In good news, I couldn’t tell the difference between blackberry ice cream from frozen juice and unfrozen juice, so I think freezing juices in times of plenty then using them at other times is a valid method. In not so good news, I don’t think blackberries make the tastiest ice cream; I do favour the subtle flavours but I think blackberries are just too subtle and need something to enhance them. Luckily I have lots of frozen blackberry juice to experiment with, and I have some ideas on what experiments run.