Connecticut Peach Cobbler

The sheaf of recipes had one entitled “Connecticut Peach Cobbler.” This is not that recipe. That recipe was just too fussy. There was sifting, and too many ingredients, and adding a sugary glaze halfway through cooking. And — like this one before I futzed — that peach dessert was tooth-curling sweet. (Is it that peaches used to be less sweet, or was a heavy hand with sugar just the norm fifty years ago?)

Cobblers and crisps should be simple. They are, after all, competing with the alternative of just plain fresh fruit. If you have a perfectly ripe peach, do you want to slice it and serve it . . . or do you want to wrap those slices in crust or sprinkle them with crunchy topping? I’m of two minds, which is why both approaches should be pretty darn easy. Level playing field, you know.

So the fussy cobbler was out, but I had to keep the “Connecticut” name. Grammy spent most of her summers in Connecticut’s northwest corner. That’s where she would have made her cobblers and pies. The peaches would have been local, and dead ripe when she used them. Fried chicken might have been the heart of the meal, counterbalanced with sliced tomatoes sprinkled with salt and sugar.

There’s a New England usefulness to this dish, too: You can use the cobbler topping on four cups of any fruit. I’ve made this with two-thirds peaches, one-third blackberries — very striking. You could try nectarines, which are perfect at the farmers’ market right now, or a plum/nectarine/pear combo, to inch from summer into fall.

For me, a fruit pie or cake means a fruit breakfast the next day. Bear in mind that that’s about as far as you can reach with this: The topping gets pretty soggy. This morning I eked out my last serving of this batch of cobbler by adding a dollop of yogurt, a sprinkling of toasted flax seeds and a big mug of coffee. Divine.

Connecticut Peach Cobbler

Serves 4-6

• Butter for dish
• 2 pounds (about 4 large) peaches (about 4 cups when peeled and sliced)
• 1/2 cup sugar, plus 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup buttermilk or yogurt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly butter a 2- or 2-1/2-quart baking dish.

Peel peaches and slice into the baking dish. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of sugar over the peaches.

Cream butter and 1/2 cup sugar in a medium bowl. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and buttermilk, and mix well.

Dollop mixture over peaches. Don’t worry about smoothing the topping or getting it to the edges: It will do all that itself in the oven. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until top is lightly browned and fruit is bubbling around the edges. Serve warm.

Before

After

Photographs and recipe copyright 2010 Garside Group LLC

Peach Pan Cake

Some of the recipes in my random stack from Grammy are larded with questions. This recipe surfaced on a largish piece of paper, written out in a rounded hand that is not my grandmother’s. The dish, called “Peach Melba,” contains no raspberry — as does the famous dessert named after Dame Nellie Melba. And this dessert is a bit unusual. Kind of eggy, but it works.

Where did it come from? Why is it made like it is? Whose handwriting was that?

I finally got a break on the handwriting. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, Grammy and Grampy — a judge in New York, and a prominent man on the local political scene — had “help.” For as long as I can remember, Grammy’s main assistant was her kitchen sidekick, a lovely woman named Gelena Slack. Gelena came in to cook, and serve at dinner parties, and who knows what else. What most of us remember is that Gelena batted clean-up in the kitchen. Grammy’s approach to cooking was enthusiastic and messy. When Gram was in the kitchen, her fingers seemed to have a permanent sheen of butter; this did not prevent her from opening a cabinet and pulling out a bowl or a jar. The counters were fully utilized. Pans, several bowls, multiple ingredients, teaspoons and measuring cups vied for space. Grammy measured accurately, but without fear of spilling. The bowl got what it needed, the counter and floors got the rest.

I make it sound like chaos. Actually, for someone who had been raised in the “pull one thing out, use it, put it away” method of cooking, Grammy’s all-out approach was charming.

For Gelena, it was a quiet eye-roll and an hour’s work. Perhaps Grammy felt she could move from one step of a recipe to another without cleaning up because she HAD Gelena there. That relationship certainly made its mark on subsequent generations: My father’s cry, “what, do you think we have Gelena?,” became a refrain in my kitchen adventures.

It turns out that the loopy green letters were Gelena’s handwriting. She had copied this recipe for Peach Melba (from where?) onto a large sheet that could be propped against the flour and sugar tins on the counter, easily read while working. The authentic spatter on this old copy? Gelena or Grammy, who knows.

To deal with another of the questions for which I don’t have an answer, I’ve renamed this recipe so that there is no confusion with classic Peach Melba. I want someone to try it and let me know if this new name really fits!

Peach Pan Cake

If you have it, a cast-iron skillet makes this look really nice. You can bring it right to the table, just so long as everyone remembers that the pan-handle is hot.

Serves 4-6

Fitting the peaches in the pan

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar
• 4 ripe peaches, peeled and halved
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons milk or buttermilk
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a 9-inch oven-proof skillet, melt butter and brown sugar together until they cover the bottom of the pan. Remove the pan from the heat and arrange peach halves round side up — cut face down — in the pan. Seven whole peach-halves will fit snugly; cut the final half into chunks to fill in gaps.

In a medium bowl, mix together eggs, milk, granulated sugar, flour and baking powder. Pour this batter over the peaches and smooth it to the edges of the pan.

Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown on top. Serve pan cake hot or room temperature, with whipped cream if you choose.

Photographs and recipe copyright 2010 Garside Group LLC

A Winning Tomato Dessert

A few weeks ago The Washington Post ran their annual Top Tomato Recipe contest. The editors carefully cautioned contestants that there were plenty of good tomato soups and fresh pasta sauces in the world, so entries in those categories better be darn good.

I had no intention of jumping into a crowded category.

Tomato’s a fruit, right? And there are a bunch of other ripe fruits at this time of year, in fact, oodillions of ripe stone fruits and berries, right? So what about a dessert, with tomato balanced by other, sweeter fruit? I set to work.

I figured that Grammy, who always served sliced tomatoes sprinkled with both salt and sugar, would be behind me in this. There are no tomato desserts in her collection, but her tomato conserve loudly proclaims that tomatoes can shine as a sweet.

Tomatoes, peaches...what's missing?

My first attempt was horrifying. Our friends Klaudia and Peter were generous. “Glmmph, interesting,” they mouthed through fiercely dry cornbready topping. I had dreamed that a cornmeal cobbler crust would be a nice touch. Not so: The heavy and dry topping completely overpowered the fruit. And I had only used peaches and tomatoes, a combination that tilted too much toward acid.

The next try was workable: Add in plums for uncomplicated sweetness and juice, and scale the topping back to a nutty crisp. A bit more tweaking and I was ready to send in the recipe — a mere 17 minutes to go before deadline.

Several weeks later, the call came: My recipe was selected from 158 entries as a finalist. I still smile to think of it. And I am proudly wearing my Top Tomato 2010 shirt for more baking.

Tomato-Peach-Plum Crisp (aka Three-Fruit Crisp)

Serves 6

• 1 pound tomatoes, washed, cored and sliced into thin wedges (about 3 cups)
• 1-1/2 pounds mixed peaches and red plums*, washed, peaches peeled and both fruits thinly sliced (about 3 cups)
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 7 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 cup pecans
• 5 tablespoons salted butter, sliced into half-inch pieces and well-chilled

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, combine tomatoes and stone fruits. In a small bowl, mix granulated sugar with cornstarch; add into fruit mixture and mix well. Pour fruit mixture into a 9-inch deep-dish pie pan.

Put flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and pecans in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pulse the mixture three or four times, until the nuts are finely chopped. Add chilled butter, and pulse three or four times more, just until butter is chopped. (If you start to see clumps, stop. You’re headed for cookie dough.)

Spread topping evenly over fruit. Put pie plate on a cookie sheet wide enough to catch drips, and place the sheet in the preheated oven. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until topping is lightly browned and fruit is bubbly. Serve warm or room temperature.

*I use about 1 pound of peaches, ½ pound red plums.

Recipe and photographs copyright 2010 Garside Group LLC