It's not summer without pie. Fruit pie, specifically. As the season's fruit, each in its turn, marches through farmers markets, aligned in battalions in juice-stained wood-strip baskets, strawberries then cherries then apricots then peaches then blueberries, we think about eating them between two pieces of crisp, rich pastry.
Would you like a juicy fresh peach for dessert? Or the fruit, sliced, tossed with sugar and baked into a deeper version of itself? Well, pie, thank you.
And forget the ice cream. And the whipped cream. The only accompaniment a good pie needs is a fork _ or a cup of coffee when you have a piece for breakfast.
Funny story about pie. We're on vacation in northern Ontario and about to dig into a bumbleberry pie from a local bakery. And the preteen nephew asks, "What's a bumbleberry?" We all laugh. But really, how was he to know? He understands blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. To him, bumbleberry just sounds like another berry. But bumbleberry describes a jumble of any berries you'd like to throw into that pie crust.
Flash-forward 10 years or so to this summer's trip. We're having bumbleberry jam from that same bakery, and the just-graduated-from-college nephew asks again, "What's a bumbleberry?" More laughter.
OK, Jake, remember this: Bumbleberry is like summer itself, easy breezy, just go with the flow. You've got blueberries, blackberries and raspberries, but no strawberries? No problem. Tumble them in. There's no pattern. Just like the perfect summer day.
As those days wind down, we offer this pie, a take on bumbleberry from the 2004 book "Pie" by Ken Haedrich. Our version proves the adaptability point in that we've churned up Haedrich's mix to fit late summer fruit. And his method offers another easy-breezy advantage: The top crust is grated, as quick as mozzarella, over the pie. What could be simpler?
