Apple and blackberry kitchen

This is a really glorious upmarket peasant style dish. There are a few good descriptions of food and eating in the book but I decided to put my own twist on it for this one.
Whilst in their honeymoon cottage in the Belgian Ardennes you hear of their housekeeper bringing them meals in pans. Things like stews, they also have omelettes and coffee for breakfast but I had a few problems with these.
First of all I couldn't find any recipes from the Belgian ardennes anywhere. Google searches brought up holiday companies and although there were great descriptions of food no recipes.
As the housekeeper was a countrywoman from the area you know it would have been local dishes that she was serving them and that was what I'd had my heart set on cooking for this post in the beginning.
When it's a style of food I know nothing about I don't like to play it fast and loose and serve it up as traditional, so I scrapped that idea completely.
An omelet was too boring as I have one practically every week with a baked potato.
In one of the scenes in the book though the couple are running away from all the fighting and hiding from the soldiers and come across some blackberries.
They're famished and take to them with a passion.
this seemed perfect to me as surely if it had been more peaceful the housekeeper would have cooked them something delicious with blackberries in?
This decision was made even better by the fact that we have a blackberry bush in our garden which was in full production when I made this decision and I didn't want them to go to waste.
I then had a gift of cooking apples from the tree in my parents garden and since apples and blackberries are a classic combination they had to join the Fray. Besides it felt like I'd foraged for these ingredients for myself which was keeping with the passage in the book I was basing this meal on.
Lastly I remembered seeing this recipe in the Nigella Bites book and I'd been meaning to try it out for a while, perfection!
This recipe is basically a rich bread dough that is then topped with blackberries and apples with an extra layer of crumble topping.
The bread dough I let rise over night and I was impressed with how it turns out. If like me you haven't made bread in years don't worry this really was quite easy.
This recipe for me was better than a fruit pie due to the fact that because the bread dough rises so much the juices don't seep all the way down to the bottom and make it soggy. This gives you a gooey with fruit juice top with a nice crisp base, mmmmm.
My only problem with this would be that it specifies cooking it in a Swiss roll tin. I was quite happy to go out and buy one but I do realise that others aren't as obsessed with kitchen equipment as I am.
The tin has a larger than normal side to it so you could probably get away with an ordinary tin if the sides are high enough. Saying that though, I've been using the Swiss roll tin for cooking other things aswel and have therefore not regretted the purchase as a one trick pony at all.
The other thing I found a bit of a bugger was storage of the fully made product, if you store it in the fridge to keep the berries fresh for longer the bread goes hard and if you store it in an airtight container you risk mouldy berries. Eat it in a few days of making. although if the bread does go hard cut it into pieces, bung it in a ceramic dish, cover with custard and bake in the oven as for bread and butter pudding. Devine!
I found the exact recipe that I used over here on the inter web and I hope you enjoyed this post.