Blackberry Turnovers and New York City

Read about my four-day trip to New York  City on my Wanderlust blog. This trip was a spur-of-the-moment decision and I am so happy I went.

The view from the Hudson Hotel

I thought it would be nice to combine these two posts together. Ruth Reichl is the cook behind my turnover recipe. I have admired her recipes and books for many years, as I still treasure my old Gourmet magazines for which she was the editor-in-chief. But she also lived in California in her twenties and thirties.

She wrote a touching story about leaving New York on the Fourth of July for her first experience teaching cooking in the Pacific Northwest for the June issue of Sunset magazine. Even though I never made turnovers before, I was smitten by the story and had to try them.

I didn't change anything in the recipe, and enjoyed every bite reminiscing about the years back when we were all young. The photo of Ruth Reichl and her husband in the magazine capture the spirit of the times.

link to my New York City post

This is an easy recipe. The only problem I had was putting the turnover together. I used a bowl to measure the pastry and a fork to join them. I also sprinkled the last batch with some turbinado sugar. I almost cut out the salt, but in the end I added 1 tsp like the recipe calls for.

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Pastry

1½ sticks ( 200g) cold sweet butter, diced 
½ lb. cold cream cheese (230g) , diced
2 cups flour
1 tsp.salt


Filling​

10-12 oz. fresh blackberries  ( 340g) ( about 2¼ cups)
zest of ½ large lemon
½ cup ( 100g) sugar
1 TBS turbinado sugar 
3½ tsp flour 
a pinch of salt
1-2 tsp milk

Directions:

Pastry

Put all ingredients into a food processor and pulse until the dough starts to come together. Turn onto a work surface, divide into half, and press each into a disk and cover with a piece of plastic wrap. Chill for at least an hour, or up to a few days.

Making the turnovers

Preheat oven to 375˙ Fahrenheit ( 200 celsius)
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Mix the blackberries with lemon zest, sugar, flour, and salt.
Do not let it sit for more than half an hour or they’ll get weepy.

Roll each disk into a 15-inch circle. Cut out rounds , Ruth Reichl recommends a 4½ inch circle to make about 15 -18 turnovers. I used a dish of that size to cut out the circles. I did one disk at a time while the other one was in the fridge. I always roll my dough between two sheets of plastic wrap and loosen them each time so that they don't stick. I had to do quite a bit of patching the dough when rolling out the circles. 

Assemble the rounds on the baking sheet. Put several berries on one half pos the circle and fold over the other naked half. Crimp the edges with a fork. Prick a few small hole on top, brush with milk and sprinkle with the turbinado  or regular sugar.

Bake the turnovers for about 20-30 minutes until they have turned a golden brown. After baking let them cool on the baking sheet but loosen the turnovers with a spatula because some of the juices will escape and stick to the parchment paper. I kept my turnovers for several days covered with a towel . 

Guten Appetit
recipe in Sunset Magazine by Ruth Reichl
posted by ©Sunnycovechef