Wild Blackberries

He had obviously been drinking for some time.

I was foraging right beside him, but he never moved. Eventually my pulling unsettled him and he lost his grip. He fell, and seemed to fall in slow motion. He landed on a blade of grass, hovered for a second to collect his balance, and then lost it again, falling further into the hedgerow, this time landing on the more secure footing of a leaf. He stopped, collected himself and then tried blearily to focus on the fruits above him.

This was one drunk wasp.

It’s blackberry time again, the time we – and, obviously, the bibulous wasps – wait for every year, when the fruits are just ripe enough to pull from their stalks, but not so ripe that they lose their bite and soften to become the sugary, narcotic hootch of the wasps and hoverflies.

We tend to freeze our bounty. Bring the berries home and bag them, a handful at a time in plastic sandwich bags. We love to eat them then, in December or January, taking a bag from the freezer in the evening, and leaving to defrost overnight. In the morning we plop them into porridge and serve them with honey, and it helps to recover these heady, drowsy late summer days, days when the air is warm and fingers are stained, and the harvest is upon us.

Those we don’t save, we put into a crumble. This crumble is great to eat mid afternoon with a cup of tea. Serve warm with a little cream.

Blackberry and Nectarine Crumble

3 nectarines
3 apples
200g blackberries
juice of 1 lemon
227g (1 packet) chilled unsalted butter
250g plain white flour
25g split almonds
half teaspoon cinnamon
100g sugar

Preheat the oven to 190ºC.

Peel the nectarines and apples. Chop the apples quite small, and the nectarines into larger chunks. Place the fruit in an oven-proof bowl and stir in the lemon juice. Carefully stir in the blackberries.

Mix together the butter and the flour, rubbing the two together with your fingers to make a breadcrumb consistency. Stir in the almonds, the cinnamon and the sugar.

Top the fruit with the crumble mixture and place in the preheated oven for about an hour. Serve warm with whipped cream.