If there was a dessert that traced the passage of time, it would be sweet pie. Eaten year round, it’s the one truly seasonal sweet, its fillings changing with the next crop of fruit and vegetables, the warmth or coolness of the weather, or an upcoming American holiday. Pie, you’re cool like that. In summer, it’s all about pies bursting with luscious fruit: peaches, nectarines, sour cherries and the rainbow of berries. I’d never thought much of blueberries until I had them fresh, plump, firm and juicy in New York. It was a revelation really.
I ate them in pies too, with their crisp, flaky pastry and beautiful lattice tops. The best are found in Brooklyn – Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Butter & Scotch and The Blue Stove – where artisan pie shops channel the grandmas of America’s south and keep them fruit forward. It’s in this vein that I’ve made this nutty rye crust pie with a mix of blueberries and blackberries, and a generous splash of rye whisky to bring it all together.