Clafoutis and pie-bler

In the Central Valley in July, the dessert kitchen is emphatically defined by local fruit.

There’s scarce baking and lots of making the rounds—strawberry stand, blackberry stand, peach stand, blueberries at the Davis Farmers Market, melons at the Davis Food Co-op. CSA pickup at Ace Hardware. Plum pickup in our own back yard.

My friend B asked me for desserts to make on his sailboat. His requirements were 1) few ingredients, and 2) no electric mixer needed.

It got me thinking those are good guidelines for summer desserts, period.  Triple digit temperatures, friends passing through, and fruit that’s dazzling all by itself. Not the time to be whipping and folding and stacking and straining and piping and glazing.

We talked about the simplest desserts, like berries with ricotta and honey. Peaches with goat yogurt.  Sliced melon with salt and chili. (“I could do that one from the hammock.”) Panna cotta. Granita. He has a little oven on board, so I gave him recipes for sbrisolona, brown butter bars, and a basic flaky pastry crust to drape over fruit. (“No rolling pin but plenty of  Amador County Zin bottles on the boat…”)

And then I remembered clafoutis.

Clafoutis is a baked, fruit-dotted custard. Eggs, milk, a bit of flour and sugar. It’s made by hand, and it’s versatile and forgiving. It’s good warm, at room temperature, and straight from the fridge.

A great dessert for beginners and boaters. Also, clafoutis is halfway between an omelet and a pancake, so totally legit for breakfast.

Cherry clafoutis (pits intact–a noyaux) is the most traditional, and apricot and prune are also common. But the Yolo blackberries have been awesome this year.

I shared a few with this guy, who was hanging out in the shade near the house. (Lil’ Snappers in the cupboards, free fruit in the yard. Can you see where I’m going with the relocation strategy?)

I make about six or eight pounds of flaky pastry crust at a time and store it in the freezer. It’s a classic pâte brisée, unsweetened so it can be used for empanadas, hand pies, and vegetable tarts. It can be cut for a double crust pie or just laid over some fruit in a casserole for an easier, one-crust “slab pie.” Aka a pie-bler.

Why is pastry always meant for one, or eight or ten? Why not two?  Sharing a croissant or cone or slice of cake is where it’s at. These little ramekins make perfect doubles. 

One plate, two forks.

We’re still working on a big batch of buttermilk ice cream, a special request by my friend K who was visiting from Memphis last weekend.

We had a mini-Memphis reunion with our other friend M, from the good old days in Cooper-Young.

But there were too many blackberries, and there was pink wine in the afternoon, and a backyard bulgogi and banchan blowout, and then we couldn’t handle very much ice cream and pie-bler.

Now, a week of hard work ahead. Writing deadlines looming large. Life around here’s not all buttermilk and blackberries and rosé and reminiscing, you know.