I had a friend in college who when everything was going great would say, "It's the berries!" I knew right away what he meant. Berries are one of nature's most beautiful gifts. When we were hunter-gatherers, berries were there for the picking although now someone else picks them and they show up in little boxes at the market.
Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries--they are little party favors of the gods, Demeter's joy at Persephone's return. They can be eaten by the handfuls right off the bush, made into jams for winter, or baked into tarts. I wanted to try Tartine's pastry cream with Rose Geranium. I planted two rose geranium plants in my herb garden in the spring to use in a jam recipe, but when I saw the pastry cream recipe, I couldn't help myself. You soak four leaves in two cups of warm milk for a half hour and then make the cream. The rose geranium is a perfect compliment to the blackberries. If you don't have the rose geranium, you can use rose water.
Since I wasn't going to be taken out for dinner on my birthday this year, I decided to make my favorite Ligurian fish stew and end with this lemon mascarpone tart with blueberries, blackberries, pitted cherries, and little sprigs of mint. Happy birthday to me.
As summer's bounty is nearing its end, I'm freezing berries in anticipation of berriless days ahead. Berries are a metaphor for the small sweet things in life. In the nearly extinct Tofa language in Siberia, "to go berry picking" is a metaphor for death, which seems very beautiful to me.
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