First taste of summer

My friend Jane's house is like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. It is a perfect little English countryside estate tucked into the hills of Brentwood. We're talking groomed rolling lawns, wild rose gardens, crawling vines, and a glass-walled sun room in the front with a view into the coziest of dens. In the office, baseball caps of all shapes and sizes and colors line the top of the back wall, hung on nails with stacks of papers and books scattered around haphazardly. Everywhere there is color and wall paper - rose buds in the downstairs guest room, cowboys and indians in the long-grown-up-and-moved-out eldest son's room, preschool drawings of animals in bright colors in the upstairs bathroom with the name of each animal scrawled underneath. Yak. Flamingo. Sheep. Cow. Chicken. The stair case splits into two ramshackle branches that lead to the boys' rooms on one side and to Jane's room on the other. Jane's room is a rich dandelion yellow and her white-washed floorboards are scuffed and perfect.
But most excitingly of all, at Jane's house, there is a bramble of blackberry bushes, wrapped around an old wrought iron gate - and this past week they were perfectly ripe and ready to be picked. I'd passed a kumquat tree on the way to the blackberry bramble, popping one of the tiny little orange fruits into my mouth and sinking my teeth into the sweet and stinging rind before letting the sour pulp gush over my tongue. The strange taste of this little fruit was still dancing around my mouth as I plopped in my first blackberry of the season. The bright and tangy citrus flavor of the kumquat brought out the deeper flavors of the blackberry and made for a pleasantly suprising flavor combination. An idea was born.
"Jane, we need to pick these blackberries and bake them in something. I'm going to make you a pie."
"I think its so funny that you want to bake. You and your weird food obsession," she replied.
"I don't care what you say," I scoffed. "I'm baking you a pie with these blackberries and there is nothing you can do to stop me."
And so a desperate search ensued for baskets and straw hats. It was sunny and warm and I was hopelessly lost to the illusion of being in the middle of the English country side. I wanted to put on a dress and swirl around the garden breathing the warm green fresh air. We found baskets and picked berries until they were overflowing and we didn't have any more hands to fill.
And so, deciding that it was too hot outside to pull off a pie dough (which is increasingly difficult to make as you raise the temperature) we settled in for a crumble, or cobbler, using Alice Waters' suggestion of pairing the blackberries with nectarines and adding kumquats at my own discretion. We also used Waters' measurements as our template for the cobbler topping, eschewing her suggestion for nuts and opting to add oats instead. The cobbler came out perfectly delicious.

Blackberry Nectarine Kumquat Crisp

For the filling:
3 cups of ripe blackberries
3 ripe nectarines cut into 1/4 inch wedges (skin on)
15-20 ripe kumquats to yield about 1/4 cup of juice
1/4 cup sugar (add more or less depending on sweetness of fruit)
1 1/2 tablespoon flour

Preheat oven to 375

1. Cut kumquats in half and squeeze until you have about 1/4 cup of juice. Set aside about half of the rinds.
2. Take the rinds you have set aside and, using a food processor, pulse them until you have a coarse paste. (If you do not have a food processor, use a very sharp knife to chop them into fine pieces.)
3. Combine nectarines and blackberries in a large bowl. Pour in kumquat juice and about 2 tablespoons of the kumquat rind paste, sugar, and flour. With a large spoon, gently coat the berries and nectarines with this mixture. Pour into a large baking dish and set aside.

For the topping:

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup of old fashioned oats
8 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (leave out if using salted butter)
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, cut into small pieces

1. Combine flour, oats, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.
2. Work butter into the four mixture with your fingers, a pastry blender, or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. (I mixed all of the ingredients in a food processor, pulsing it until it resembled course crumbs). The final result should be crumbly, not sandy. If your mixture is too much like a dough, or a paste, thats ok - just break it up into pieces as you sprinkle it on top of the fruit.
3. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit, coating it evenly but not entirely. Bake in 375 oven for 4-55 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling in the dish.