Blackberries aplenty

My adorable five-year-old nephew Rowan knows some of the top blackberry picking spots on Vashon Island, which is a 15-minute ferry ride away from Seattle. Early one clear summer morning, we set out with his girlfriend Eloise-who is so cute I can hardly stand it-in her tiny colorful apron over her bright summer dress carrying a fairy tale basket. It promised to be a great little adventure.

Summer is one of my favorite times in the Pacific Northwest, there is something very magical about it; crisp and bright, lush and green with the great smells of summer: pine trees, freshly cut grass, the intoxicating fragrance of roses and ripe blackberries all around!

Everyone on the island picks blackberries and it’s a good thing that the Himalayan variety, which is considered an interloper, grows abundantly everywhere, dense and thorny, upstaging the wild blackberries. But when I can plop a luscious sweet tart berry in my mouth, do I really care if it is native?

Once we had our fill and our tongues couldn’t get any purpler, we picked lots more berries, squeezing through the bramble with squeals of pain-these thorny vines are vicious! With our fingers stained, snags in our clothes and a few less hair left behind on the vines, we proudly returned home with our booty. We had plenty to preserve deeply purplish-red jam and enough for the perfect summer dessert, a clafouti.

Clafouti is a French thing-lots of eggs, knob of butter, bit of milk, flour and sugar with hints of vanilla and lots of ripe berries. It puffs up nicely to a mouthwatering golden brown like a Dutch Baby tinged with brightly colored dots. The clafouti is wonderfully satisfying when still warm; the baked custard, sweet yet discreet, gives the blackberries all the glory they deserve. Most excellent with whipped cream, Rowan can attest to that.

Blackberry Clafouti

Inspired by a recipe from O, the Oprah Magazine
serves 8

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled plus more for greasing

2 cups ripe blackberries
1/3 cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 Tsp vanilla extract

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 Tsp salt

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. Fill with blackberries. In a blender, combine rest of ingredients except confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Pour batter carefully over berries as not to move them too much and bake until puffed and golden, about 40 minutes. Dust with confectioners’ sugar and serve still warm with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Caffè corretto

When I was in Italy a few years ago, I discovered a quite wonderful drink: caffè corretto. It literally means a corrected coffee, and not only do I like how the words rolls of my tongue, I also like the taste. Caffè corretto is served in every cafe or bar in Italy, and easily prepared at home. I brew a pipping hot, strong espresso, add a quick pour of hard liquor (like grappa, rum or brandy) and a teaspoon of sugar. Downed quickly, it is the best pick-me-up on a lazy or rainy afternoon-it puts me right somehow and brings a smile to my face. And it takes less than a minute!

So when I returned from a recent trip to Nicaragua and to Paso Pacifico, I brought home darkly roasted, fragrant Nicaraguan coffee beans and a bottle of rich, sweet Flor de Caña rum. It occurred to me just then, that these are the perfect components for a caffè corretto, Nica style.

While savoring my little pick-me-up the other day, I remembered some amusing moments that I experienced in Nicaragua:

• Crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua on foot with my tiny rolling suitcase 
• Listening to teensy frogs in the middle of nowhere that sound like car horns and computer games
• Touching a fruit bat's pregnant belly
• Waking up to booming church bells and obnoxiously noisy parrots at 6 am in the colonial city of Granada
• Peering at pigs busily foraging on a playground in El Ostinal
• Looking into the most expressive face of spider monkey Roberto
• Observing hundreds of Halloween Crabs hastily crossing the street just in front of our car
• Watching the cutest Nicaraguan junior rangers reciting a poem to me in Spanish even though I don't speak a word of it