O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes and wish you might live forever in the wideness of that rich moment.-- Richard Llewellyn
Richard Llewellyn On Wild Blackberries and Cream
Emma's earlier post on foraging for food reminded us of the sheer wild pleasure of finding those tiny blackberries hidden in the brambles behind our childhood home. It took pluck and determination to glean just a few tiny berries from between the thorns; hands and bare legs were scratched, but it was worth it for those tiny bites of juice and berry flesh.
There was never enough for a tart, and they weren't of the lush size that Llewellyn praises. But they were wild, found treasures that took work and a little pain, and that hunt made them more precious than any berries more easily come by, so sweet in the mouth, even when underripe and a little sour.
We think it was the wide, wild taste, too - it's simply unreproducible in our farmed food. What wild fruit have you eaten lately? Look for it - it's worth the scratches and the sunburn to eat your fruit straight from the tree.
Related: Found Food: Do You Forage for Food?
(Image: Flickr member jurvetson licensed for use under Creative Commons)
Comments (8)
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Jamie Oliver should be very familiar with unusual food names:
Spotted dick,
Bubble and squeak,
Angels on horseback.
hmmm, sounds like a Spotted Pig menu.
view art's profile
oops...this comment was for the second post.
That quote broke my concentration.
view art's profile
I know of a mulberry tree in a park nearby. They don't taste great by themselves, but we were making many mulberry cobblers back in April and May.
view gillsnthrills's profile
O! A quote from "How Green Was My Valley!" My heart smiled.
I recently went on a hike with friends in the panhandle of West Virginia, and we found both wild blueberries (so tiny!) and wild blackberries on our trek. Pluck and determination indeed! I still have scratches on my upper arm, and managed to step in an anthill in the process... only realizing it when my friend pointed them out, crawling up my leg! Still worth it.
view D. Humbird's profile
When I was a kid, back before we knew about Lyme disease, we used to pick bowls and bowls of wild blackberries from the brush near my great-grandmother's house in Montauk. They would be made into cobbler, jam, all sorts of things. Some mornings I would go and pick a few handfuls to eat with my Rice Krispies. Some years when there had been a lot of rain they would be fat and the juice would run down your hand from picking them, other years they were more compact. Once I disturbed a bees' or hornets' nest, and I ran like hell down the path to the ocean and jumped in, swimming parallel to the beach until I knew they were gone. I walked home on a different path and never went near that picking spot again! We picked so many things out there: wild grapes in the fall, wild blueberries, and even an incredibly hush-hush, family-protected secret spot for beach plums. The beach plums are gone now though.
view Pencils's profile
When I was growing up, I used to pick wild blackberries, raspberries, and sometimes (when I was very lucky) wild strawberries from the brambles and paths near my family's summer cottage. The raspberries were hands-down my favorites (still are), but any wild berries are pure magic.
view jlyn13's profile
Do blackberries ever grow on trees? I remember picking strawberries and blackberries from bushes as a child, but I just moved into a new apartment and there's a large tree in my backyard with berries that look exactly like that. Anyone have a clue? I don't want to get sick from taste testing a random berry!
view crazy_betty's profile
@crazy_betty:
Do the berries look like this?
They could be mulberries.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/art_chel/2615934079/
view art's profile