Now is the best time to eat blackberries!

Try my delicious Burrata with roasted seasonal beetroot and blackberries, hazelnuts and fresh thyme. Beetroots in the UK are the best and sweetest in spring and summer. Blackberries ripen in August to mid-September and can be foraged in the wild, so bring a container for your next countryside walk.

I am fortunate to have blackberries growing wild adjacent to my house in London, so I don’t have to walk very far. They thrive in a rare piece of wilderness in this vast metropolis, which is fantastic. I picked the berries there for this recipe and will go back for more. That said, I still love my proper countryside walks, which have become a lifeline during the lockdown.

What I love about blackberries is their versatility; they are as suitable for savoury dishes as they are for sweet ones. In this recipe, I paired a whole luscious and creamy Burrata per person with a salad of roasted beetroot, blackberries, hazelnuts and thyme. Balsamic vinegar and honey bring out the deep flavours of the beetroot while hazelnuts add a welcoming crunchiness and the thyme a freshness.

Serves: 4    Total time: less than 30 min with pre-cooked beetroot

Blackberry black or sot black?

The English seaside is scattered with black weather-board or clapboard houses. I feel at home with these houses, as they remind me of summer houses in Scandinavia.

Around this time last year, my husband and I visited the flat and almost desert-like landscape of Dungeness, a headland on the coast of Kent with a shingle beach and under the watch of a nuclear power station.

Among the traditional fisherman’s huts, architect-designed summer houses have emerged over the past decade; the most famous one is perhaps Simon Conder’s Black Rubber Beach House from 2003.

The stark landscape of Dungeness was also the home of the late filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-1994). Here he shot his film The Garden. The garden itself is like no other garden.

INGREDIENTS

Blackberries around 10-15 per person
4 Burratas (1 per person)
500 g beetroot
Olive oil 2 tbsp
Balsamic vinegar 2 tsp
Honey 2 tbsp
Fresh thyme 4-5 sprigs
Hazelnuts 100 g roasted and crushed
Salt and pepper for seasoning

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180°C Fan.

2. The trick here is to cook the beets correctly as the rest is easy. There are three methods for the beetroot depending on whether you are using cooked or raw beetroot.

A) Use ready-boiled beets. Chop and mix the beets with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey. Season well with salt and pepper. Oven-roast the beets in a non-stick dish for 15 minutes.

B) Boil raw beets with the skin on for 50 min or until soft. Submerge in cold water. Once cool, the skin will slip off easily by hand and if working under water, the fingers will not stain. Chop and mix the beets with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey. Season well with salt and pepper. Oven-roast the beets in a non-stick dish for 15 minutes.

C) Peel and chop the beetroot. Mix with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey. Season well with salt and pepper. Roast for 25-30 min or until soft.
Let the beetroot cool down a bit. Taste and add more seasoning if required. Arrange a whole Burrata on each plate, circle with the oven-roasted beetroot, add the blackberries, chopped and toasted hazelnuts and fresh thyme.

Enjoy!

Tips: I could only find whole hazelnuts so I toasted them first in a dry frying pan while continually stirring. Once the scent of the hazelnuts got stronger, I removed them from the pan and let them cool down before chopping and adding to the salad.

If you are allergic to nuts, swap the hazelnuts for toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds.