Berry, Berry Quite Contrary . . .

"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day!
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"
~"Blueberries" by Robert Frost

As you all probably know today is Tuesday and that means it's Tuesdays with Dorie here at Oak Cottage. The one day during the week that I join in with a bazillion other bakers around the world and bake a delicious recipe from that tasty book, Baking, from my home to yours by the baking queen herself, Ms Dorie Greenspan!

This week Amy of South in Your Mouth selected Double Crusted Blueberry Pie on pages 361-363. I was absolutely thrilled to find this out as blueberries are one of my most favouritest things of all and well, pie is also my most favouritest of all things too!



Blueberries, as a child, meant hard back breaking labour in the bush back home picking wild blueberries that took hours and hours. Long about the end of July, beginning of August the ice cream buckets would appear on the kitchen counter and we knew that blueberry season was beginning. My dad would drive us all in the car to some remote area that was well known for having tons of the little blue delights and we'd spend a long afternoon in the hot sun picking them. It seemed to take forever and was really hard work. Wild blueberries grow close to the ground and you have to pretty much crouch the whole time you are picking . . . your back gets really sore. If you are a greedy gus and eat as many as you pick . . . well . . . picking an ice cream bucket full takes a very long time . . . There was always a particular smell in the air out in the bush that is difficult to describe . . . it smelled kind of like heat and earth and sweet woodruff and fear . . . for wild blueberries are just as popular with bears as they are with humans and in Nova Scotia they are quite a common sight out in the bush . . . the bears that is. My parents always reckoned they were taking us to a secret blueberry picking spot that nobody else knew about, but the truth is that in Nova Scotia, in late July, you can stop at the side of the road in just about any spot and find an abundance of the little blue jewels . . .



So anyways, back to the recipe at hand. Wild blueberries are not readily available here in the UK and more's the pity. Wild anything tastes infinitely better than cultivated and blueberries are no exception, but let's face it when you have a craving that must be met, you'll take just about anything you can get! The crust went together really easily for this recipe. I just have a small capacity food processor so I had to do it in two batches, but c'est la vie! It took a lot of butter!!! I think I can blame Dorie totally for creating these two axe handle hips of mine! Normal sized pie plates are not readily available over here. I have a couple of pyrex ones that I brought over from North America, but they are both 10 inch ones, so I used the only smaller sized one I have which was only about 7 1/2 inches wide, but no mind, it just meant that I had a deeper and fuller pie! (I'm all for thick pies!)



The recipe for the filling itself was very straightforward and went together in no time at all. I did end up using the juice from a full lemon, not just a squirt! I have a confession to make here and now. I filled my pie, popped on the top lid, crimped it and brushed it with the egg . . . and then sprinkled it with delicious demerara sugar only to turn around to see my bread crumbs sitting on the counter . . . unused, and so I ended up having no breadcrumbs in mine, which meant that the filling was a bit runnier probably than it should have been, or maybe that was just my greediness making me cut the pie too soon before it had cooled down enough . . . however there were no complaints coming from the corner of the Toddmeister as he tucked into it . . . "This is a keeper!" he managed to mumble through his blue crumbed lips . . . and I had to agree!



If you would like to see the recipe you can find it in full on Amy's page when she posts it later today. I think it's one you will all enjoy! Next week's recipe will come from Melissa of It’s Melissa’s Kitchen. I'm not sure which one she has picked yet, but I'm sure it will be a good one!



By the way, I'm not sure if it's because I had to use a smaller pie dish or because the crust recipe is quite generous but I had some dough leftover and I decided to do what my mom and gran might have done and I made Jam tarts as a bonus! (you just take the pastry trimmings, roll them out and cut them into circles to fit a small tart tin and then pop a tsp of fruit jam into each one before baking). Todd was ever so pleased because jam tarts are also one of his favouritest things!



PS - Don't panic if I am a little late posting tommorrow morning. I have a very late night of work looming ahead of me tonight so I may not get here until later in the day. It all depends!

PPS - the clear winner of this weeks Make Me Bake Poll was the Strawberry Toffee Tart! Ohh goodie goodie gumdrops!!! I really wanted to bake this one and you have not let me down! Time to put up another poll!