Berry nice

At the Grower's Market today

We're deep into berry season here in southern Oregon.   I adore berries; I'm happy to eat them just plain (often while standing next to the berry bushes in the garden) or with half & half or cream.  Strawberries were the only fresh berry I ever had as a child, and I'll always remember the very first time I tried raspberries and cream, out of a champagne glass one sunny Berkeley morning.  Served with a sly grin and a flourish by a handsome man I was completely infatuated with, no wonder they're still my favorite. Still, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to make use of the delicious summer bounty. 

"Slabs" - love the name (not)

This week a new idea came via Relish Magazine, one of the freebies that arrives monthly in the newspaper.  There are several similar publications now, and more all the time. It started with Parade magazine. Julia Child and then Sheila Lukins wrote for Parade, bringing a cachet to their populist mission that I think is missing now under Bobby Flay. The Publishing Group of America, which is behind Relish, also produces the beyond-lame American Profile whose recipe offering this week is an unfortunate Chicken Milano: "Long the favorite of college students in the United States, ramen noodles are a perfect base for this substantial chicken dinner." Eww.  But I like Relish.  You may have to avert your eyes from the lurid advertising that makes these free magazines feasible (Marshmallow Pebbles Slabs is this week's gross-out award contender) but the featured recipes can at times be both adventurous and accessible.

Anyway, that was a long digression; the Relish recipe for English summer pudding is right here. Don't expect me to make any jokes about British food. The thought of a dessert of boiled berries in a soggy bread is perhaps not immediately appealing, but my whole family will back me up when I say this is a keeper (I'll admit, I wasn't going to bet on their approval, and I halved the recipe to make a one-quart version - perfect for using up my half-loaf of day-old La Baguette challah).

I did a little poking around on the Internet and found a couple of more recipes - it seems that red currant is considered an important ingredient, and also it is more authentically served with clotted cream. For comparison's sake,  here's a version by an Englishwoman transplanted to San Francisco; and another from the London Times.

I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the Mail Tribune doesn't ditch Relish in favor of Dash, Parade's new newspaper food magazine, set to launch in September with the tagline “Simple. Fast. Delicious.”  The first two, probably - the third, we'll see.