blackberry picnic

Ana, Ken, and I went on a picnic at Magnuson Park, followed by berry-picking, yesterday. I made little pies--cheddar and olive for Ken,



and beet green and feta for me and Ana.



Here they are after being baked (the snails are the beet green ones, the hoops are the cheddar):



They're pretty easy to make, and are good for things like picnics and work lunches.

Beet Green Pies
(makes eight)

Dough:
500g flour, 100-200g of it whole wheat if you like
1t instant yeast
1 1/2t salt
1/3C olive oil
1C warm water

Filling:
400g beet greens (or spinach or chard), sliced into strips
kosher salt
100g feta, chopped up
1/3C toasted pine nuts
3 cloves garlic, minced, or to taste
sumac
olive oil

The night before, mix together all the dough ingredients, let rest a while, then knead till smooth and elastic. Let rise overnight.

Sprinkle salt over the greens, and rub it in till they've darkened and shrunk. Squeeze them hard, to get as much juice out as you can. Throw out the juice, then fluff them back up so that you have a heap of individual strands again.

Divide your dough into eight pieces, and flatten each out into a disc. Let them relax for ten minutes or so, then start assembling pies. Roll out a disc of dough as thinly as you can, then scatter with greens, feta, pine nuts, and garlic. sprinkle on a pinch of sumac, drizzle some olive oil, then finish however you like. You could just fold them in half, sealing the edges, or you could roll them up like cinnamon rolls and form into hoops or snails.

When you're done, let them rise for 40 minutes, then brush with olive oil and bake at 375ºF for about 25 minutes, until they're beginning to brown.




We also had this nice raw beet salad, which was made of grated chioggia beets, parsley, toasted walnuts, orange zest, and goat cheese, and dressed with walnut oil and orange juice.



At first we thought we were going to fail at blackberrying, as it seemed people had come just before us and pick all the good ones. Everywhere we looked there were lots and lots of red berries, and old, dried-up berries, but hardly any nice, ripe berries. It was hot and sunny and we were getting tired.... Finally I found a little path leading to a tiny meadow surrounded by virgin bushes, and in our last twenty minutes we got far more berries than we had in the previous hour.