Apple and Blackberry Pie, deconstructed.

Foraging is never far from our minds as we travel around in the bus. 
The day we left Mayfield, back at the start of the end of February we found several apple trees on the side of the road, laden with fruit. So of course we had to stop and fill a couple of large bags. These apples weren't quite ripe and tart would be an excellent word to describe them.  However they have had a week or two to ripen up and are now perfect for that apple pie.

We have been looking in vain for blackberries and we would have to say that this is not a good season for them. We have certainly found lots of blackberry plants growing in all sorts of places but alas little or no fruit. I had thought that maybe that it has simply been too dry, or maybe there aren't enough bees out there (plenty of bumblebees but perhaps they don't like blackberry!)
So we were really pleased to find a good crop up on the hills above Granity, at Millerton and we managed to collect enough to at least attempt a pie.

Collecting berries at Millerton

The bounty.

 So now with the blackberries, out came the apples and soon a dessert was not far away. We have a gas oven for baking and it isn't always very good at browning the food, and pastry is tricky enough at the best of times. However I have found if the pastry is cooked on a piece of baking paper, on its own it puffs up beautifully. I have in the freezer some pastry squares (from Quality Bakers in Invercargill that are an excellent buy at $1 per pack of 10) so I cut the squares in to triangles and baked them.
With the blackberries and apples stewed together with a little sugar all the ingredients needed for my 'deconstructed pie' were ready and it was just a matter of assembling our dessert.