Cobbling dessert together

There's a whole family of desserts that Richard Sax wrote about in his indispensable "Great American Desserts." These are the grunts, bettys, crisps, cobblers, dowdys, and other desserts that involve fruit and dough of some kind. They aren't pies. They're in a class by themselves. Where one stops and one begins, is a topic for serious food historians to talk about. Not me.

Late in the summer, when the peaches are incredibly heavy, juicy and sweet, I turn to cobbler. I love cobbler. Guy loves cobbler. I know that it is a tradition in some families, especially in the south, that cobbler IS dinner. And what's wrong with that? This is a pretty substantial dish, and if you want to eat two, or three portions and call it dinner, I'm not going to argue with you. I AM going to ask you to have a salad for lunch the next day, but again, if you decided to eat something else, who am I to argue with you, hmmmm?

Cobblers are really wonderful desserts. They're beautiful when they come out of the oven, you can eat them warm, or at room temperature, and they take to cream accompaniments like basil does to tomatoes. Peach is my favorite, but you can modify this basic recipe however you like. Change the fruits. Leave out the ginger. Add more spices. Add different spices. Just make the darn thing. You'll be glad you did.

First, let's get the oven ready, by preheating to 350. That's low for most cobbler baking temperatures, but the low temperature lets the fruit flavors come out. Have a baking sheet ready, because cobblers tend to overflow their baking dishes. And there's nothing wrong with that. Ultimately, it makes the dish kinda sexy.

Get your fruit ready. Some people are rather chintzy with their cobbler fillings. I'm not. Three pounds of peaches, or even four, are good. You can peel them if you want to, but I like the skin in a cobbler. If you don't, but you don't want to go through the trouble of peeling, use nectarines instead. Slice them into thin slices, perhaps 6-8 per piece of fruit. Combine them with one or two small packages of berries. I LOVE the look of raspberries with peaches and nectarines, but if you'd prefer blueberries, or blackberries, again, don't let me get in your way. Combine these with a cup of sugar, and turn it all GENTLY. Then let it sit for an hour, while the juices come out of it.

While that's happening, make your biscuit dough. This is easier than it sounds. You'll need two cups of flour and about a third of a cup of candied ginger. Then add a teaspoon of salt or so, and two tablespoons of baking powder, and another half cup of sugar. Mix this all up together, and then cut in a stick of unsalted, cold butter. I do this in the food processor, which makes it very easy to get a nice, mealy feel to the flour. That's what you want. Now, with the processor running, pour in 2/3 cup of good, old fashioned heavy cream, and watch everything come together. Leave that in the processor while you dump about a third of a cup of flour out on a flat surface.

Let's go back to that fruit now. Here, you can either leave out, or put in, two tablepoons of cornstarch. The cornstarch will thicken the juices, but it won't suck them all up. If you really like a runnier texture, and feel that you don't want a floury "feel" to your dish, leave it out. It's not really necessary. Whichever way you go, now put the fruit into a buttered baking dish. One that will hold about two quarts. You can dot this fruit with butter if you like but you don't need to. You could also stir in some extract , like almond or vanilla, or some spices, like cinammon. You could also work the cinammon into your dough.

Get that dough out onto that floured surface, and turn it onto itself, like you were folding an envelope, four or five times. Then break off eight, roughly even pieces. Round them in your hand if you like symmetry, and put them right on top of the fruit. Brush a little cream on these biscuits, and sprinkle a little sugar on them, raw sugar if you have it. (nice and crunchy). Put this in the oven, on the baking sheet, and let it go for at least forty five minutes. You want to see bubbling juices. THICK bubbling juices, and a substantial amount of b rowning on the biscuits. You may have to let things go another fifteen minutes or so to get that effect, and do it if you do need it.

Don't try to eat this right out of the oven. It's very hot, there's a lot of sugar in it, and this will burn you very, VERY easily. Wait until it's warm, or room temperature, and then serve it forth with some ice cream, or some whipped cream, or something dairy. It really needs it.

You can do this, and you should. We're in Summer, Part II. Splurge a little.