Can you imagine something more gorgeous than taking a stroll around the farmer’s market, while the vegetables and fruits in your head form different recipes? ‘Hey, they already have fresh …. if I combine them with … ah, … is on offer, I could make … with it, but then some … with it would be nice…’ And so on and on. I therefore usually spend a lot of time on the market, even if I don’t buy that much in the end.
This week the fresh chantarelles and blackberries attracted my attention and formed my dinner plans: pasta with chantarelles and and for dessert a little blackberry cobbler, loosely inspired by the one made by the Pioneer Woman.
When I was a child we had various berry scrubs in our garden – rasberry, gooseberry, blackberry, red and black currant. It took us several days in summer to pick all of them and transform them into jam or juice or just fill the freezer with them for future baking and cooking. In the following summer you could still find plastic bags filled with currants carrying the date of the past year…
I also remember picking various kinds of mushrooms as well as blueberries and lingonberries when we were on family holidays in Austria and South Tyrol. As you can see on the picture, most of them went straight into our stomaches… Sometimes we brought the mushrooms or berries to our hosts at the guesthouse. After they assured my father that the mushrooms were indeed eadable (Needless to say, that we had one of those mushroom identification books, but hey, in this case you want to be really sure!), they cooked our dinner using them. I had the most delicious mushroom omelettes there.
Carrying the masses of berries of my childhood in mind, later I was shocked, when I saw the price tag on the small trays of berries at the market. Since then they have become luxury, an only occasional delight.
pasta with chantarelles
ingredients (2 p.)
100g chantarelles, 150 g pasta (I chose short tagliatelle), 2 tablespoons bacon cubes, 2 tablespoons parsley, 2 tablespoons sour cream, 1/2 teaspoon mustard, salt and pepper
preparation
Cook pasta, following the instructions on the package, and put them aside. Clear traces of forest (earth, needles, moss…) off chantarelles using only a knife (and no water). Roast bacon cubes and chantarelles in preheated pan. Chop parsley and mix with sour cream an mustard. Mix all ingredients in your pan. Season with salt and pepper.
blackberry cobbler
ingredients (4 mini cobbler)
250 g blackberries (or of course every other kind of berries), 2 + 2 tablespoons sugar, vanilla, 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, 3 tablespoons wholegrain flour, 1/2 teaspoons backing powder, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 egg
preparation
Gently mix berries, 2 tablespoons sugar and a dash of vanilla and let the berries soak the sugar. Meanwhile whisk the rest of the sugar, eggs and butter. Add flour and baking powder. (If you want your cobbler less hearty, just leave the wholegrain flour out.) Pour the sweetened berries in one big baking pan or four small ones as I did (actually little tartelette moulds). Cover fruit with the dough. Bake in your preheated oven at 180°C for about 20 min. Vanilla ice cream, custard or whipped cream are great upgrades to serve your cobbler with, but pure it is as well delicious (ok, I simply forgot to buy custard…). Could have eaten a lot more!
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