Oops
My husband makes the following recipe, from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (a book everyone should own):
Blueberry Sauce
3 cups blueberries, stems removed
2 tsp molasses
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar to taste
1 tsp ground cinnamon, or ginger, or 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg (we use the ginger; it’s awesome)
Juice of 1 lime to taste
Rinse the berries and put them in a saucepan with the water clinging to them. Add the molasses and sugar, and the spice. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. When the berries burst and fall apart, taste, add the rest of the sugar if needed and stir in the lime juice.
She recommends putting this on pancakes (which is how we use it) or sherbet or ice cream. Whenever we have this with pancakes, it disappears quickly. A blueberry-loving cousin will cover the pancakes with sauce so that the pancakes completely disappear, and smile. It’s really fantastic.
Blueberry season is over here, but I made chili pepper + blueberry jelly. With hot Thai chili peppers. Holler if you want it and I’ll post the recipe. Goes great with goat cheese (or cream cheese) on a nice crusty French bread.
I also make a vinaigrette with Thai chilis, white wine vinegar, blueberries, honey, olive oyl & garlic.
I’m like the Bubba Gump Shrimp guy when it comes to blueberries… I can come up with nifty new ideas pretty much all day.
Please share the recipe!!
kittenblue, any chance of you posting the French blueberry pie recipe? I’m drooling over the thought of the hidden cream cheese layer.
We pick wild blueberries around Labor Day every year. It’s my favorite end of summer ritual–pack a good picnic lunch, drive up to our secret mountain spot, and fill up buckets and buckets with tiny, sweet berries. It’s a marvelous way to spend the day.
You got it!
I used about 1 cup of Thai chili peppers – very important to de-seed or it’s just too hot. Any sort of hot pepper works. (I grow my peppers in the garden, but you could use any variety, or a combination of several – habeneros, serrano, jalepeno, cayenne, whatever – from the grocery store, which allows you to control the degree of smokin’ hot.) My pepper-only jam would call for about two cups of a bunch of different hot pepps.
Also about 1 cup of blueberries, slightly smooshed to make 'em juicy. (Potato smoosher great for this.)
Run this through a blender or something to crush everything up – I added another half cup of whole blueberries at the end. I like chunky jams.
Put in a pan with about 1/4 c. of white vinegar. and about 1 cup of water. Simmer for about 10-15 minutes (to extract the flavors), then bring to a boil. Add 7 cups of sugar, gradually, stirring in with a whisk so there’s no lumps. Add 1 packet of liquid pectin, boil hard for exactly 1 minute, then cut heat off and allow to cool a little. This recipe will fill about 6-7 half-pint-sized jelly jars.
Ladle into sterilized jars and, using the water bath canning method (boil for five minutes in a giant friggin pot), seal. No need to use pressure cooker. You could also just pop the jars into the fridge to set up, but then you have to keep 'em refrigerated because the jars won’t be sealed. The jam will keep for a few months in the fridge this way, or will keep for a few years if you use the canning method. It doesn’t matter, because each jar last about 2.5 hours in my house before it’s been devoured and licked clean! I can’t keep it in the house and my co-workers fight over it when I bring in a few jars.
This jam is awesome on Texas garlic toast, or as I said, on goat cheese with French bread, and it can be used as a marinade for white fishes and meats. Or as a sauce on anything where you like a mix of sweet & spicy.
Thanks, Dawg!
You mean go outdoors and stuff?
No thanks, I’ll pass 
BUT…you gave me a great idea as to what to tell my uncle when he does his planting next year. He’s got a good-sized garden in my yard…and since I am still working on ridding my yard of wild raspberries, I never thought about blueberries. I look forward to it now!
I’ll take your raspberry bushes! We had some years ago, and I miss them. As to the care and feeding of blueberry bushes…I have no idea. I’m 50, the bushes are about 50…they just grow. I think sometimes they get sprayed, but I’ve never done it…I’ll ask Grandma.
And Now, the recipe:
French Blueberry Pie
1 graham cracker crust…9 inch
1 qt blueberries, washed and drained
1 c sugar
3 T cornstarch
1/8 t salt
1 c water
1 T butter
1 3oz package Cream Cheese
1/2 c powdered sugar
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 c whipping cream
Prepare your crust, if not using store-bought.
Mix 1 cup of the blueberries in a pan with the sugar, cornstarch, salt and water. Cook and stir over low heat until thick. Add the uncooked berries and the butter. Mix well and cool.
Cream together the cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla. Whip the cream, and fold it into the cream cheese mixture carefully. Pour into crust and spread evenly, reserving some for garnish if desired.
Spoon the cooled berry mixture over the cream cheese. Pipe reserved cream cheese filling around the edge of the pie, or make random stars on the top…whatever floats your boat.
Chill thoroughly in refrigerator at least one hour before serving.
There is also a cherry version, using canned cherry pie filling (or make your own) but I’ve never tried it.
Just straight blueberry pie is my craving. I like simple things. When I was in Boy Scouts, our usual summer campsite had lots of blueberry bushes, so I built a reflector oven and brought the relevant pie ingredients with me, and made a blueberry pie from scratch in the woods.
It was great! The raccoons agreed – they broke into my tent to sample it. Some of they guys asked me for some pie as bait for a trap they were building.
Oh yeah, blueberry pie!
I like it straight too, I suppose you also make the pie dough (sugar, butter and flour) and just spread it in the pie tin, and then put in the blueberries and sprinkle sugar on top? That’s how I make my straight blueberry pie. I also eat it with icecream. Or vanilla sauce.
Mmmmhhh…
Thanks, kittenblue! That sounds fantastic.
I tried this tonight…didn’t form it into a ball, just mixed it all together…but it seemed like something was missing, so I added a bit of honey…still seems like it needs something. I spread it on a hot English muffin. It was good, but rjk, did anything else get mixed in with this when you made it? And again, what did you serve it on/with?
Had to go back to my Rodale’s and check, as it’s been a few years.
They have shallow roots (so water frequently) and like moist but well drained, loose soil, a bit on the acidic side. Says that it takes 6-8 YEARS for them to reach full production, which matches what I saw. Recommends mulching around the plants with pine needles or oak leaves to keep down weeds and maintain soil acidity.
“Plants lacking nitrogen have stunted growth and yellow leaves…”
Personally, I’d worry about being too close to the road. Lots of crap and potential chemicals can drain off the road into your plants. And one good vehicle swerve can take out the whole bunch, assuming that the town/county/whatever doesn’t come through and mow down the lot.
Dogzilla, you made me do something I have resisted doing for 30 years…do some canning! I made a batch of your Blueberry-Chili jam last night, and it turned out great. I put up 7 jars, with enough left over for sampling, and gave one away to my boss for her birthday. Some I will use during one of the concerts I cater in the fall, the rest will be Christmas presents.
I’m not a huge fan of hot, and I know virtually nothing about peppers, so I checked out the Scovile rankings and tried to pick a mixture of medium hot peppers to use. Of course, it didn’t help that the names at the grocery store didn’t quite match the names on my list! I settled for one jalapeno (bought three, but only used one), one poblano and one banana pepper. Chopped up that made one cup. This turned out to be perfect for me, because you get lots of flavor, but no actual heat. I could see where I could kick it up a bit, but for my purposes, it’s perfect. And all my jars sealed, and the jam set up immediately! Thank you so much for the recipe. I’ll be bringing a jar to the next CleveDopeFest in October, but judging from the number of bottles of hot sauce elmwood has at his place, I think the guys will find it too mild.
Oh, man. Blueberries galore here in Oregon, except in my yard. I planted two bushes last year and they both went belly-up in short order :(.
Every year I pick a ton and freeze some of them for birthday blueberry pie in November. It makes for a lovely, sunny bit of summer in the dreary fall.
One of my favorite breakfasts is a bowl of fresh cottage cheese and blueberries with or without a spoonful of honey… yum, yum, yum!
kittenblue, I’m delighted that the jam worked out for you! (And honored that one of my recipes was used by a Doper. I feel like I’m famous! Next Stop: Top Chef!) I use habeneros, Thai Chilis and Cayenne = Super Duper Hott.