My in-laws returned from a trip to Fresno the other day, their carry-ons stuff with nectarines.
I 
Now, these things would have been delicious in almost any form, but I've never made a cobbler before, so they became the guinea pigs. I went with the Joy of Cooking for this one, though I was quickly cursing those little old ladies who edited the dessert section. I basically made this up as I went along, forced to fill in their blanks with what very limited knowledge I have of baking. Again, these could have been drizzled with gasoline and still tasted heavenly. So, despite the insufficient directions and the real ugliness of the preparation, the cobbler wasn't a total disaster.
The preparation is very "Joy of Cooking" in its rusticity. You can just see how the cobbler was born out of leftover biscuit dough and overripe fruit. In fact, good ol' Joy had me flipping pages three times over to get from the biscuit recipe, to the pie filling recipe, and back to the cobbler recipe to confirm (for the thousandth time) that they really didn't mention how to prepare the filling.
When you have it all in one place, it's very easy to get a basic cobbler together. Read on for assembling the California Nectarine Cobbler.
Prepare your favorite biscuit recipe (This is mine).
The size of the above linked recipe is good for this cobbler. You'll need enough dough for about a 1/2 dozen biscuits. Set the dough aside.
Ingredients for the Filling:
4 large, ripe nectarines
2 egg yolks
2 Tbs. flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup melted butter
Preparation of the Filling:
Preheat the oven to 425ยบ.
Pare and slice up your Nectarines. The halves below were cut into 1-inch thick crescents.
In a medium pot, stir together the Yolks, Flour, Sugar, and Butter until well blended together. Add in the nectarines and stir gently to coat them in the sauce.
When they are covered in the sauce, place over medium heat. Stir frequently until the mixture comes to a boil and the fruit is nice and soupy.
Pour the hot fruit and sauce into the bottom of a 9-inch baking pan or the equivalent casserole dish. Top the hot fruit with the evenly spread biscuit dough. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
Dot the top with butter.
Bake in the oven for about 35 minutes or until the biscuit dough gets slightly golden.
I really enjoyed the cinnamon-y biscuits over the perfectly tart nectarines. Especially when you add vanilla ice cream.
But, I am interested to hear others people's cobbler leanings. I know I have had cobbler where the dough was less bicuit-y and more cake-ish. I've had crisply cobbler and fluffy cobbler. How do you all achieve your cobbler toppings?
P.S. 90% of photos in this post are by Penn Glendinning. 10% by me. I was feeling a little stressed by the instructions. I needed support. He also prepped the fruit for me. Thank goodness for Penn!
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ReplyDeleteI think a cobbler topping that might be interesting to try would be to tilt it more toward a macaroon texture (and flavor) by adding those sticky, chewy ingredients like coconut, almond extract that macaroons tend to have. There's a natural affinity between almonds, peaches and nectarines since the pits of all of them are very almond-esque. The chewy-ness and sweet-itude of the macaroon topping would be a good foil for the tart-orial nature of the nectarines. (Some of these words aren't actually in the dictionary. I know. I looked them up and they're not there.)
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