summer food: blackberry and pink prosecco ice

There are few things more satisfying than blackberry picking. Across the street from my Dad's old house was the most enormous cluster of blackberry bushes you ever laid eyes on. Not much to look at for most of the year, but for two weeks during the summer, the thorny brier would transform into a two-block-long, 15-foot-high wall of unadulterated berry mania.

The bike path that ran alongside the bushes meant that a good many berries were picked off by weekend riders (thieves) and as the sun started to set each evening, some of the neighbors would head out with their colanders and grab what was at arms length (fortunately they were elderly). But no matter, because the choice berries were always the hardest to reach. The dark, super-fat fruit hung heavily at the top, daring to be picked. Like little sirens of the produce aisle, they would call – and I would answer. A bottle of Bactine and bag of cotton balls later, I would emerge with a bucket of fruit for the record books.  

No need to go commando in your neighbor's yard or pull over on the side of busy highways for this one, however. A few pints of berries from your farmer's market will do nicely. The color of this sorbet is spectacular and the Prosecco brings out the flavor of the fruit, while providing the smallest touch of effervescence. And really, you can use any sparkling wine you like, but since you'll have 3/4 of a bottle left over, it might as well be a cute pink one to sip chaise-side while your sorbet chills in the icebox. -Sarah

20 minutes active time

4 ingredients

4 hours of reading or napping

Ingredients:
18 ounces fresh blackberries
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup water
1 cup pink Prosecco

Preparation:
In a small sauce pan, heat water to a boil.  Remove from heat, add sugar and stir gently to dissolve.  

Blend blackberries in a food processor until smooth, about 30 seconds. With the motor running, drizzle in the sugar syrup and process 20 seconds more. Add Prosecco and pulse until blended, about 10 seconds.

Strain blackberry mixture into a container, cover and freeze until firm, at least four hours.  Dig out the ol’ melon baller and scoop into your most fancy pants stemware, or eat it right out of the fridge with a spoon.

Note from Kelly: By this time next week, our trusty food editor Sarah may have her second baby! So please wish her well. Like the great person she is, she’s stacked up more delicious lazy summer recipes, so this won’t be the last we hear from her. But Sarah deserves all the effervescent blackberry ice in the world to keep her and the baby company in the wee hours of the night. I wish we lived in the same place so I could feed it to her personally. I love her that much.

And for more summer blackberry rhapsodizing, check out this post from last summer. An event that I plan to repeat before summer’s end. xoKelly

the urban thicket

There is one thing the summer fog can’t suppress around here: the annual blackberry glut. I heard this story on NPR about blackberry picking in Seattle right as I was noticing the thicket of dark berries cropping up alongside the roads and paths in parts of the still-wild Presido here in San Francisco.

So this weekend, I headed out with my sister and her family. The thing I realized about urban berry-picking is that it makes passers-by really happy. Like giddy-little-kid-happy to see you with a pail or bag in hand, plucking away, with the berries making that telltale plonk, plonk. People stopped us and gasped, “Blackberries, really? Can you eat them?” or asked what we were going to make, or told us they were going to come back and pick their own too. Or just walked away smiling, with their own handful.

My niece pointed at one older man who passed and said, “Look mama, a farmer!” Maybe that’s because he was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a red shirt and smoking a pipe, like all the farmers in her books. But just for the briefest of interludes in our urban lives, we were the farmers. Wading into the brambly bushes and clamoring to get the darkest and heaviest-looking berries as the juice stained our fingers magenta and the thorns scratched our arms if we got too eager.

The woods were so hushed, it was almost as if they were in on our secret. It all reminded me of this lovely poem, even though it’s about raspberries:

Picking Raspberries
by Lisel Mueller

Once the thicket opens
and lets you enter
and the first berry dissolves on your tongue,

you will remember nothing
of your old life. You can stay
in that country of sun and silence
as long as you like. To return,

you have only to look at your arms
and discover the long, red marks.
You will have invented pain,
which has no place there.

After we left the blackberry world, we took our loot home. My sister’s family made blackberry ice cream. As I simmered my stash into a syrup for homemade Kir Royales or ice cream, I realized that I made the same thing this time last year in Ireland. But it's a fate I don’t mind repeating.