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Slump, Buckle & Grunt


Toliver

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I have a couple pints of blueberries & a pint of blackberries fresh from the farmer's market.

Does anyone have a suggestions/recipes for a quick and easy berry dessert? I thought a slump, buckle or grunt might be the answer but, of course, I don't have any recipes for such desserts.

Any recipes or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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Another nice idea is a spongecake roll filled with a bluebarry and/or blackberry filling. Powdered sugar on top, whipped cream on the side...

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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I especially like the "ginely shredded orange peel" in the first of those!

Sorry, Toliver, I don't have an actual Recipe, as such. I always kind of fake it. I toss the berries in a pot with reasonable amounts of sugar, lemon, cinnamon, maybe nutmeg or some such. No water - generally I've just washed them, and that's enough to keep them from scorching until they start sending forth their juice. Cook until done - i.e., beautifully gloppy/syrupy. By this time I have frantically hunted up some sort of dough/batter recipe; sometimes I use a sweetened biscuit dough, sometimes a softer, more dumpling-y, batter. And then I just lump it over the berries, cover, steam till done. The frantic hunting generally takes place in my battered old Fannie Farmer, which is very good for basics like biscuits, dumplings and such. There's probably (sorry, it's downstairs and I'm not) a cobbler recipe there and I'm almost positive there's one for cottage pie - if memory serves either topping would work for this. Sorry to be so vague, but our season isn't as far advanced as yours, so I haven't gotten back into the swing yet or determined what my obsessive approach is going to be this summer. Who, me, vary these things according to whim? Damn right.

But my favorite combination always will be blueberries and peaches.

EDIT to correct name of interlocutor! Sorry!

Edited by balmagowry (log)
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excellent thread title!

Thanks. I wanted to come up with something that might make readers interested enough to look inside at the request.

Unfortunately, I don't think it beats this thread title. :laugh:

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

Sorry, Toliver, I don't have an actual Recipe, as such. I always kind of fake it.

I figured the berry sauce/filling would be the easy part to toss together. It was the accoutrements I wasn't so sure about.

In that case, there's always a berry sauce on vanilla ice cream.

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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excellent thread title!

Thanks. I wanted to come up with something that might make readers interested enough to look inside at the request.

Unfortunately, I don't think it beats this thread title. :laugh:

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

Sorry, Toliver, I don't have an actual Recipe, as such. I always kind of fake it.

I figured the berry sauce/filling would be the easy part to toss together. It was the accoutrements I wasn't so sure about.

In that case, there's always a berry sauce on vanilla ice cream.

And how bad could that be? Or berry glop with thick cream floated on top. Or with whipped cream shlooped on top.

It's not as if you can possibly go wrong here.... :biggrin:

Edited by balmagowry (log)
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And how bad could that be? Or berry glop with thick cream floated on top. Or with whipped cream shlooped on top.

It's not as if you can possibly go wrong here.... :biggrin:

You're absolutely correct. I hope that we have enough PC's and bakers on this board to provide enough inspiration to last the summer's berry & fruit season and beyond.

By the way "Glop & Schloop"...now there's a law firm for ya. :wink:

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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How about a variation on Summer Pudding?

Put the fruit in a saucepan with some sugar (quite a lot if you like it sweet), and maybe some lemon juice, heat until the juice starts to run

Line a pudding basin with bread (Wonderloaf works fine). Pour in the fruit, put on a bread lid, and then put on a suacer that just fits, and weight the lot (tins or anothe basin full of water. Leave in fridge until cold. Turn out, decorate, serve with thick cream... The bread turns to a wonderful soggy treat...

The famous attorneys are Sue, Grabbit and Run

Edited by jackal10 (log)
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How about a variation on Summer Pudding?

Put the fruit in a saucepan with some sugar (quite a lot if you like it sweet), and maybe some lemon juice, heat until the juice starts to run

Line a pudding basin with bread (Wonderloaf works fine). Pour in the fruit, put on a bread lid, and then put on a suacer that just fits, and weight the lot (tins or anothe basin full of water. Leave in fridge until cold. Turn out, decorate, serve with thick cream... The bread turns to a wonderful soggy treat...

The famous attorneys are Sue, Grabbit and Run

I think I saw Gale Gand do something like this on her cooking show. It sounds delicious and seems easy to do. What did you mean by "juice starts to run"? Do you mean, the berries start rendering out their juices?

Another law firm: Dewey, Cheatem and Howe. :biggrin:

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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I just made this with some fantastic blackberries over the weekend. I like cobblers, but I prefer the cake-batter-ish ones over the pie pastry or biscuit topped variety. This one was wonderful; I particularly liked the flavor added by the brandy syrup tossed with the berries.

It's from King Arthur's Baking Companion

Fruit Cobbler

Cobbler is a distinctly American dish. Its name is said to come from the phrase "to cobble," meaning to patch something together roughly; to "cobble up," put something together in a hurry; or perhaps from the fact that the combination of fruit and dough on top of the dish looks like cobblestones.

Cobbler can be made with many different fruits, alone or in combination. Fruit is placed in a pan and a pastry crust, sweet batter, or biscuit dough is placed atop it; or batter is poured into the pan, and the fruit placed on top. Either way, the two end up mixing and mingling, the fruit mixture absorbing some of the cake-like dough, the dough absorbing the fruit juices, and the finished product resembling nothing so much as a very, very moist fruit cake.

1 cup King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons margarine, softened

2 tablespoons milk

1/2 cup sherry or brandy

3 to 4 cups fresh fruit (large fruits sliced; berries left whole)

whipped cream or ice cream

Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a 9 x 9-inch baking pan or 11-inch round quiche dish.

Mix flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside.

Beat together eggs and 1 cup of sugar. Add margarine and milk. Add flour mixture, stirring just to combine. Pour batter into pan.

Simmer together sherry and remaining 1/2 cup sugar for 3 to 4 minutes. Add fruit. Pour hot mixture over batter in pan.

Bake 30 minutes. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Edited by RebeccaT (log)
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What about a berry fool? You can cook down the fruit a bit (add some sugar if the berries are tart). Then whip up some whipped cream and fold the fruit in.

"Some people see a sheet of seaweed and want to be wrapped in it. I want to see it around a piece of fish."-- William Grimes

"People are bastard-coated bastards, with bastard filling." - Dr. Cox on Scrubs

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Living in New England, my in-laws grow blueberries in a pen, and I grow blackberries in my backyard. Nothing beats a nice Black & Blue Pie which someone earlier posted.

I have 2 completely different recipes for Blueberry Grunt. The first is a traditional old New England one, the second is adapted from The Nero Wolfe Cookbook. You can add/substitute some blackberries at your discretion.

Yankee New England Blueberry Grunt

Place:

1 quart blueberries in a kettle with very little water.

Add:

1 1/2 cups sugar. Let come to a boil and drop tablespoons of dumplings over top.

Dumplings are made of:

2 Cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Add: 1 egg beaten well and 1 cup milk

Cover kettle and steam lightly for about 20 minutes.

Blueberry Grunt-Nero Wolfe style

4 cups blueberries

1 cup sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter (cut into small pieces)

8 slices sponge cake

Put berries in a saucepan with the sugar and cook over low heat for 10 minutes. Line an 8 inch square baking pan with 2 slices of the sponge cake. Spoon one cup of blueberries and juice over the cake. Dot with a couple pieces of butter. Continue layering cake and berry mixture and butter. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees 15 - 20 minutes. Cool. Serve chilled with ice cream/whipped cream.

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I ended up making the black & blue berry pie from the recipe link that Gifted Gourmet posted (click). It was so stupifyingly simple it surprised me. I ended up with a huge mound of berries in the pie (imagine a berry Mt Everest) which worked out great since they collapsed once they cooked and I ended up with a nice full pie that wasn't too tall.

The recipe only called for cinammon as a spice so I also added a dash of ground cloves, a dash of ground ginger and the zest of a small lemon using my awesome microplane (I hate people like me who don't follow the recipe exactly!). The pie came out quite tasty and not overly sweet.

The only drawback was I didn't let it cool completely so once I cut into it, I had berry goop innards oozing all around. Which, if this is the only bad thing happening in my life right now, it ain't bad being me. :wink:

I also decided when I do this again to wait until the weekend instead of making it on a work night during the week. Whew!

Up next will be TrishCT's Grunt. :laugh:

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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Toliver,

Nothing like a good black and blue pie!

A word about grunts:

(Why are all the 13 year old boys laughing now....?)

In olde New England cookery, they were the low men on the totem pole, in comparison to cobblers, buckles and bettys. They were what you made when you had leftover berries but not enough lard for a piecrust.

The first recipe I gave you is as Yankee New England cheap frugal as they get. The Nero Wolfe version is definitely an upper crust (heh) adaptation.

Happy grunting!

Trish

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, my Blueberry Slump was a disaster. :angry:

I think the problem I had in following Trish's recipe was the key word "little" when referring to how much water to add. I may have added too much since by the time the berries came to the boil, the little bastards had given up all their juice and I actually had blueberry soup.

So when I added the dumplings, which were supposed to steam on top, they dropped right through the floating berries and down into the soup. If anyone wants some purple doorstops, let me know! :laugh:

Not wanting to waste the berries, which had thickened up into a heavenly deep purple blueberry sauce, I used it on top of vanilla ice cream. Now that was a success.

I may have to try this again (with less water) before the blueberries are gone from my Farmer's Market. Can frozen blueberries be used instead of fresh?

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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Toliver, sorry the recipe is vague, it's an old yankee recipe and that's how they wrote 'em... I would use 1 Tablespoon water max. If you use frozen berries they might need little to no water.... Glad you had some good blueberry sauce!

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Toliver, sorry the recipe is vague, it's an old yankee recipe and that's how they wrote 'em...  I would use 1 Tablespoon water max.  If you use frozen berries they might need little to no water....  Glad you had some good blueberry sauce!

Well, I can attest that my "little" bit of water was nowhere near 1 tablespoon. It was enough to cover the bottom of the pan but with no depth which was probably 7 to 10 tablespoons.

[HOMER] DOH! [/HOMER]

Thanks for the feedback, TrichCT. Life is about lessons and boy, did I learn something. :hmmm:

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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