Blackberry Crumble for tea

On one of the few sunny days we have seen this summer we wandered around the fields close to our home and indulged in one of our favourite free activities – blackberry picking.

Now I have to admit, personally I’m not a big fan of blackberries. I think it stems from when I was little and used to go ‘blackberrying’ with my own parents and I gorged on them and ended up rather poorly…..

Anyway, back to our sunny afternoon. 

We didn’t actually intend to collect blackberries. We had gone for a stroll and happened to notice the bushes full of fruit. Grumpsie decided he fancied a blackberry crumble for tea. He’d already begun pulling fruit from the bushes before considering what we could carry it in.

Grandma rooted around in her bag for a suitable container and came up with……an envelope!

 

When the envelope was full, pockets came into their own!

Surprisingly, even though we only picked fruit for a few minutes, on our return to the kitchen we weighed the fruit and found we had gathered over 600g of blackberries.

So, on with making the crumble.  I do have to adapt recipes because I’m coeliac and others in the family have problems with digesting diary, so my recipes always exclude gluten and usually exclude dairy too whenever possible. 

For my crumble I used:

500g/1lb blackberries

The juice of 1 orange.

120g/4oz brown rice flour

4 tbsp sugar

120/4oz diary free margarine

My grandma used to recommend leaving hedgerow fruit in a bowl of water for an hour or so and sprinkling a little sugar on top of the water. She insisted this would draw out any creepy crawlies from the fruit. I have no idea whether it works but I did it anyway.

 I didn’t notice anything nasty floating on the water but, just in case I skimmed the surface with a slotted spoon before giving the fruit a good wash.

I then placed the blackberries in a saucepan with the orange juice and 2 tablespoons of sugar. 

I gently warmed the fruit, stirring well, until the fruit was softened slightly and the sugar had dissolved. I then drained the liquid from the fruit before dividing the blackberries between two  oven proof serving dishes.

In a separate bowl, I sieved the flour and the remaining sugar; added the dairy free margarine and rubbed together to form a crumble.

I sprinkled the mix over the blackberries

 then placed the dishes the middle shelf of the oven, heated to 180C/350F/Gas4.

I baked for 20 minutes until the top was golden brown, removed from the oven, allowed to cool slightly and served.

 Grumpsie was official taste tester

 His opinion of the finished result?

'Delicious!'

A Yummy Tuscan snack

Once again I've been inspired to get creative by a competition. Aren't competitions great? Not only do we have the opportunity to dream about a glorious win but the theme of the competition often gets us trying things that would otherwise be out of our normal scope.

This time the inspiration came from a competition being run by  http://www.lovethegarden.com/blog/a-taste-for-tomatoes-a-recipe-blog-competition and requires creation of a meal including tomatoes.

I do love Italian food but sadly since being diagnosed coeliac a little while ago my favourite pasta and pizza recipes have become a rare occurence on the family dinner table.

So the opportunity to do something Tuscan was too good to miss.

As ever, my recipe began life as a regular recipe purloined from elsewhere, but because I'm notoriously fickle about using certain ingredients, it soon developed a life of it's own. Let's start with the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes - for a true Tuscan Bruschetta these should be plum, but this is my first adjustment. I'm not particularly keen on plum tomatoes so here they have been replaced by vine ones.

Olive oil - I know the purists amongst you will be disappointed that this is not extra, extra, super duper, special virgin - or some such....but again, it's the oil I like.

Parmesan cheese - smelly and hard to grate I know but there really isn't any better cheese for Bruschetta!

Salt & black pepper

Fresh Basil

Spring onions - another replacement. These should really be garlic but I wasn't in a garlicky mood today. Plus, my garden has a sudden glut of spring onions at the moment and I'm all for making the most of what's available!

Gluten Free bread rolls - obviously the gluten free bit is essential for me because of my Coeliac Disease. Clearly in a true bruschetta these would be replaced with a long baguette or something similar.

Method:

This recipe was so simple that I spent most of the time I was making it convinced that I'd forgotten something! The first step was obviously to chop the onions, tomatoes & basil. Put these into a bowl with 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a couple of pinches of salt and a little black pepper.

Slice the bread and place it on a baking tray. Sprinkle with a little more olive oil and pop it into the oven for 5 minutes to toast.

Now I know it's hard and I know it's smelly but the next step is to grate the parmesan.

Simple so far? Well, that really is it!


Once the bread is toasted, remove from the oven and pop onto the serving plate. Top with the tomato, basil and onion mix and cover with parmesan.

Next and most important step is ENJOY!! (I did!)

So, a big thank you from me to the organisers of this competition. I do realise that my recipe isn't particularly difficult or unique but entering this competition has reminded me how much I enjoy this type of food. This recipe will definitely be making a return appearance on my menu sometime soon!