had to get away: Marionberry Slump (or Marionberry Grunt)

it's slump, it's slump, it's in a pot.

When Europeans settled North America, they brought with them any number of useful and beloved things, particularly culinary habits, and when they couldn’t find quite what they needed, they adapted for their new home. From the pies, tarts, clafoutis, and steamed puddings of Europe came cobblers, crisps, slumps, grunts, buckles, pandowdys, bettys, and pot pies, all variations on a theme improvised with fresh, seasonal fruits and crusts, biscuits, and dumplings. Most of the variations with which we are familiar date to the nineteenth century, when they were family dishes, easily and quickly prepared in the kitchen or over a fire with primitive equipment.

The grunt and the slump are more closely related to the steamed pudding than pie, and involved a stewed fruit filling topped with dumplings and cooked stovetop. The two seem to be mostly interchangeable, though some sources assert that a slump is cooked stovetop, while a grunt is the same thing, but cooked in the oven. It is also said that the slump is named for the sloppy appearance it presents on one’s dish, while the grunt is named for the noises it makes when cooking. They are essentially steamed cobblers, whatever else they might be.

Marionberry Crisp

berries in the dish

Eli: This is so easy that I’m just going to get right to it. All I am going to say is that as a younger child, crisps were one of my favorite desserts.

3 cp Marionberries (Schatzi is generous with her pints)
½ cup brown sugar
2 Tbs cornstarch
¼ tsp salt

crispy Marionberry Crisp

1 cp butter in ¼-inch cubes
½ cp brown sugar
½ cp flour
1 ½ cp oats
½ tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, and berries together in a bowl, being careful not to crush them—you’re already putting them through enough abuse in the oven. Place the mixture into an 8×8 baking dish.

In a small bowl, combine topping the ingredients until the mixture is incorporated and crumbly. I used a KitchenAid to do this but you can use a fork to get the same results in a little more time. Electric mixers are great too.

Evenly distribute the topping onto the berries and place in the oven on the center rack for 45 to 50 minutes. Remove when the top is browned, and let cool for 15 minutes before serving. I suggest serving it with a good vanilla ice cream.

Marionberry Upside Down Cake, i

Last week, Eli and I, along with two of my sisters, took a trip out to Sauvie Island to pick berries. The U-Pick

Mairionberry Upside Down Cake

experience seems to be essential to a Portland summer; many people make a tradition of doing it at least once a year. For some, it is a way to return to childhood memories of growing up on or near farms, and for others it’s a novelty to see food growing in an up close and personal way, and/or a way to feel connected to local food production—if in a fairly superficial way. (I suspect there are quite a few of the latter here in Portland.) I don’t remember going to a U-Pick more than a scant handful of times during my childhood, and I’m fairly sure Hawai’i still has nothing in the way of a U-Pick, but I do have very fond memories of fresh summer fruits.

Growing up, I spent summers here in Portland with my father, stepmother, and sisters. (Sometime, ask us what Historic Irvington was really like before gentrification.) The neighbor in the house behind my dad’s had an enormous cherry tree. I don’t know what kind they were, but they were a deep red and delicious, only slightly tart, and perfect for pie. A few times a summer, the big kids would climb up onto the garage roof to pick cherries, and we would have an orgy of fresh cherries and cherry pie for a few days. Once, I accidentally swallowed an entire cherry whole—pit, stem, and even a small leaf.