Sassy Radish

Should you find yourself in a precarious situation with too many peaches (a common occurrence in this household where we love summer produce), you must, at once, head over to the kitchen and make cobbler. It’s really an unwritten rule of summer. Make a note, don’t forget it. You can thank me later.

Cobblers are delicious, but beyond that, they are forgiving – they look better imperfect, slightly scraggly. Summertime pie crusts, though I love them beyond words, can be a bit finicky. They love the cold, but summers here tend to be hot, sticky – an enemy of cold-loving crusts. Even though I have pretty much gotten my summer pie production under control, there are times when you don’t have the hours to chill the crust before rolling it out. Sometimes, you up and decide you want to make dessert and there is fruit that needs to be rescued. So on days when I don’t have a pie crust hanging out in the fridge, or if I have simply forgotten to take the crust out of the freezer, cobblers are a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Continue reading peach, apricot, and blueberry cobbler.

Fall is decidedly making its entrance with cooler and darker mornings and evenings, and is further marked by the disappearance of berries from the farmers market. I realized something was off season-wise, when I asked for hot coffee the other day instead of iced. And I actually wore a sweater coat out to dinner the other night and still was cold! That could also be the fact that I happen to be a girl a girl and get cold very easily. Or maybe it is actually getting chilly. Anyone else reaching for an extra layer when they go out?

And yet I’m in my perpetual never-happy-with-whatever-season-I’ve-been-given mode. Spring is gone? But what am I to do with half a dozen strawberry recipes I want to try? Summer closing in on us? But! But! Wait! There are still tomato recipes sitting untouched on my desk, watermelon sorbet promised and forgotten about, and cobbler – Andrew’s favorite dessert, that I’ve been meaning to make all summer and yet until now, have failed to deliver. How does one forget to make her boyfriend’s favorite dessert? Shouldn’t courtship ensure that such thing are moved to the top of the priority list?

Alas, blueberries are no longer at my farm-stand. But clever girl that I am, I froze a few pints and kept them for those moments when blueberries are called for (like pancakes), but are no longer in season. Frozen blueberries store remarkably well, given that it’s a hearty berry with thickish skin. There are still a few bags of these gems sitting around and awaiting their fate.

Last weekend, when we were blissfully lazy, soaking up the last few days of summer and making good use of the long weekend, I suddenly remembered my promise to Andrew that I would make blueberry cobbler. It was sort of a last-minute memory, but one that decided that evening’s dessert. [Did I mention that this household respects its dessert?] Cobblers are forgiving, quick, messy desserts. They’re rustic, unpretentious, messy, unfussy. They are in my preferred family of desserts where their beauty lies in their imperfections. A little drip on the side of the pie dish. A crumb or two on the plate. A messy piece heaped onto a plate and topped with a scoop of ice cream that immediately begins to melt to bleed into the blueberry filling, spreading itself out into a creamy blue rivulet on your plate. I could eat that mess every day.

And since I’ve a few bags of frozen summer berries in my freezer, come winter there’ll be a cobbler or two served around here. It’ll be decidedly out of season, but much like a tropical vacation mid-winter can seemingly shorten the winter season and cure the snowy blues, so shall blueberry cobbler – reminding us of summer, sun, picnics in the park, and the golden summer light that seems to go on forever.

Continue reading blueberry cobbler.

Thank you all for the kind comments and emails in the last two months. The support that you’ve given me through the last two and a half months has been invaluable and carried me through what has been a very difficult period.

To make a long story short, my relationship ended, I moved out of the apartment my ex-boyfriend and I shared and moved into a new one by myself. And since I took only clothes, books and a few treasured kitchen items like my beloved KitchenAid mixer and a pasta maker, I had to acquire everything else from scratch. Furniture, dishes, sheets, mixing bowls, canisters and so on. You’d be surprised at how quickly the little things begin to add up and how much time it eats up. And before I knew it, summer had ended and fall snuck up right behind it. Now the mornings are cooler and there’s a definite chill in the air. I’m craving hot coffee instead of iced, and put on a sweater before I leave the house.

And if moving wasn’t consuming enough, the economy has kept us all focused and fixated, especially last week, when the markets had a near meltdown with violent swings and the US government had to step in. Even my grandmother, who has no concept of the markets or what it is that I do for a living, asked me about what is happening to those “stops” and people losing money on them. She calls them “stops” my grandmother, and even she is concerned that their value is steeply declining.

But enough of that. The difficult part is behind me now and I am looking forward to the future and trying to cook in my new kitchen, which, while lovely, lacks any legitimate counter space. Which makes for tricky cooking. Almost like juggling and constantly washing and drying and trying to find another square inch of space, and believe me, every inch is a blessing. That is until my sleek kitchen cart gets assembled and then counter space, here I come!

Still, limited as I am, it hasn’t completely stopped me. And the first chance I got to make this blueberry cake, I did. The instant I spied it in the New York Times, I was instantly excited to make it. I couldn’t decide what to get excited about first: fresh blueberries? Toasted almonds? Orange zest? And so I made this for the small painting party I held last Saturday when friends and I transformed two bland white walls into stunning, muted grey ones. And the cake – it too was a stunner. The toasted almonds and the zest give the blueberries amazing dimension and that little edge of mystery and complexity – perfect with a cup of strong, hot coffee. Just in time for fall.

Continue reading blueberry cake.