Recipe #2: Mulberry Rhubarb Crumble

I made this for the first time last week and it is now one of my favorite summer dessert recipes!


I used mulberries from our yard:








And rhubarb from our garden:








Ingredients

1/2 cup white sugar
5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 cups washed, de-stemmed mulberries
4 cups washed, diced rhubarb
2 tablespoons corn starch
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup rolled oats







Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, mix white sugar, 5 tablespoons flour, corn starch, mulberries and rhubarb. Pour the mixture into a baking dish (9x13 inch works best, but you can use other dimensions).
3. In a separate bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups flour, brown sugar, butter, and oats for the topping.
4. Crumble the topping over the mulberry-rhubarb mixture.
5. Bake 45-50 minutes, or until topping is crisp and lightly browned. There should be some bubbling of the filling along the sides of the pan.

Tips
1. This is roughly what the diced rhubarb should look like:








2. De-stemming the mulberries can be a laborious process. I used kitchen scissors to snip the stems off, and here's what my hands looked like afterwards: (mmmmm, mulberry juice!)








3. The crumbliness of the topping depends on how much butter you add. This recipe yields an even, crunchy layer on top of the filling, almost like granola. Adding more butter will make the topping clump together more.





This is what it looks like after baking:













And in cross-section:











And a la mode!

Mulberry Recipe #1

This is my absolute favorite recipe for mulberries.

You will need:

1 warm summer afternoon, preferably between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00.
1 mulberry tree.



Step 1. Identify the biggest, darkest purple berries.

Step 2. Gently try to pull them off the tree. The best method is to try to give them a little twist as you pull. If the berry resists, DO NOT PICK IT, EVEN IF IT LOOKS RIPE. Trust me, it's worth waiting an extra day or two to allow them to reach peak flavor.
Step 3. Pop ripe, sun-ripened mulberries into your mouth and enjoy!

Mission Statement

My love affair with mulberries began when I was nine years old. I was spending a week at The County School summer camp with my best friend, Alison. We were having a bit of a rough time: we didn't know any of the other kids there, and we were rarely put in the same activity groups. Every afternoon we were granted a few precious hours of free time, and Alison and I found a comfortable perch on the white painted gate where we could catch each other up on our respective activities. On one of those fateful days, we suddenly realized that the tree we were sitting beneath was laden with dark purple berries that looked like little blackberries. Not only did they look appetizing, they tasted even better! Thus began our progressive stripping the mulberry tree of all its berries, even the unripe ones, until its lower branches were completely bare of fruit. When our week of camp was over, we reminisced about our afternoons whiled away eating mulberries and talking, and I think the mulberry tree was the single element I missed the most in the subsequent years.

About three years later the mulberries struck again, this time during swim season. I was a hard-core summer swimmer (two-a-day practices,time trials, clinics, big pasta dinners....), and one day after morning practice a bunch of my teammates and I were roaming around the club for which we swam. All of a sudden, we felt something squishy under our feet, which were coated in pulpy, purple goo. I looked up, and my jaw fell open. It was a mulberry tree! So close to me this whole time and I hadn't known it! I soon recruited some of my friends into the mulberry fan club, and we invented a new sport, mulberry wars, in which we would pick handfuls of the plump, juicy berries and smear each other with the purple juice (the one who most closely resembled a lavender bush lost).

When I outgrew summer swim team, I assumed that my access to my beloved mulberries would be severely limited, if not cut off completely, as I now spent much less time at the pool. However, last week the mulberry gods smiled down on me again, as I discovered a fair number of large mulberry branches hanging over the fence from a tree in our neighbor's yard. I took it as a sign. Mulberries clearly wanted to be in my life. It was time I showed them the deference they deserve.

And thus, Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Blog was born.