17 September 2008
12 September 2008
06 September 2008
puzzled by peaches...
In the dreams of many a hapless home cook reside images of all the beautiful golden pies and impossibly tall and delicately decorated cakes that you wished you had the talent to make. Those of us in the cook camp often redouble our efforts to develop baker’s skills but generally do so only to our own emotional peril. The (sometimes spectacular) failures over which I have presided have only served to reinforce my belief that there are cooks and there are bakers and rarely can any one person be both. Indeed, the very skills that make for a good cook-- adventurousness, improvisation, inexactitude--tend to undermine the attention to detail and impossible patience that is demanded of the baker. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve made pies and cakes that I thought tasted good…but I don’t think I’ve made many that seemed genuinely worth the effort they required.
In the summertime, however, the cooks get a reprieve. That reprieve comes in the variety of ways one can turn summer berries and stone fruit into, if not pies, at least a series of “pie-like” creations. Cobbler, Buckle, Brown Betty, Crisp—redolent with the sort of burnished Americana for which all of us (even non-Americans) are, I imagine, hard-wired to feel nostalgic—are the closest a cook like me really gets to a successful pie. One need only throw some fruits into a dish with some butter, flour, and sugar and the oven yields rare, sweet pleasures with a minimum of the pain that some of us refer to as “baking.” Rather than rolling or crimping or doing that tedious basket-weaving thing—all of which practically give me night terrors when Thanksgiving is near—one need only sprinkle or press crusts and toppings into place for cobblers and their cousins. Indeed, the cobbler family of desserts transfers the responsibility for ultimate success from the cook to the fruit and offer the added bonus of intending to look rustic instead of refined. For what more could the cook ask?
This all brings me to a puzzle—a peach puzzle to be exact. Had I heard of this exquisite baked dessert without having had the opportunity to eat it, I’d have accused the recipe-writers of trying to sneak a pie recipe under the noses of wary cooks. On the face of it, the peach puzzle really does seem to be the black sheep of the cobbler family. Relying as it does on what the recipe refers to as “the abracadabra of a magic trick” (incidentally, if you want to know if you're a baker or a cook, ask yourself whether that description tantalized or terrified you), a trick demanding inversion before serving, the puzzle seems awfully ripe with potential for disaster. It also requires some work with a rolling pin. (Admittedly not more than do a batch of biscuits, but still...) A pie in disguise is how I might have described it. This is not auspicious for the pie-wary.
Happily, a friend of mine—one who is that most secretly envied of all things, a good cook and a good baker—prepared this recipe for me from local Indiana peaches last summer and despite her mad skills, my fears were laid to rest by her assurances of its level of difficulty. The recipe (the link is here) was the grand prizewinner in a contest run by Cook’s Country Magazine (part of the America’s Test Kitchen empire) for the best heirloom recipes in the United States. It is nothing more complicated than a biscuit crust laid over some lovely ripe peeled peaches. In the middle of the dish, you place an inverted ramekin to eventually collect the juices. Before laying the crust on top, you pour a little slurry of brown sugar, melted butter, and water over the peaches to help make those juices more, well, juicy. What could be easier?
Okay, so the other night, in celebration of my birthday, I decided to make peach puzzle again. By the time we got through dinner and into the kitchen to make dessert, it was, like, 11:30-ish at night. I was tired but committed. Like the cook that I am, I cut several corners, including pretty much every step in the recipe. The result was a crust too small for the plate but I persisted. It was my birthday. I wanted dessert, dammit. After taking this out of the oven, I was pretty concerned. The “magic trick” referenced above consists of a process by which the liquid from the peaches and brown sugar mixture somehow gets sucked into the upside-down ramekin you place in the pie dish. This means that you get a crispy biscuit crust, beautifully poached peaches, and a little dish of peach syrup perfect for topping the necessary scoop of vanilla ice cream that you put on top of each serving. When I took the puzzle out of the oven this time, the juices were still in the pie dish; not in the cup. This was ominous. I let the plate cool (turns out I had forgotten this was the essential step) for the requisite half an hour and while the result was not quite as perfect as my first attempt, the magic did work, the cup did fill with the lovely syrup, and the whole thing was still delicious. (Though served about an hour after my officialy birthday had passed...). I still don’t really understand how the magic trick works save to say that it has something to do with contraction and expansion and steam (right???) but what is important is that it does work.
We have snacked on our puzzle through three nights of remedial “Mad Men” viewing, which demonstrates the extent to which the dish holds up in the fridge if you’re worried about making a large dessert for a small crowd. So, there is no excuse not to try this if peaches are anywhere in your vicinity. Hurry up, too. I can already feel the chill of fall in the air.
before the crust is place on top...
smacking of failure...
not half bad for the middle of the night.
In the summertime, however, the cooks get a reprieve. That reprieve comes in the variety of ways one can turn summer berries and stone fruit into, if not pies, at least a series of “pie-like” creations. Cobbler, Buckle, Brown Betty, Crisp—redolent with the sort of burnished Americana for which all of us (even non-Americans) are, I imagine, hard-wired to feel nostalgic—are the closest a cook like me really gets to a successful pie. One need only throw some fruits into a dish with some butter, flour, and sugar and the oven yields rare, sweet pleasures with a minimum of the pain that some of us refer to as “baking.” Rather than rolling or crimping or doing that tedious basket-weaving thing—all of which practically give me night terrors when Thanksgiving is near—one need only sprinkle or press crusts and toppings into place for cobblers and their cousins. Indeed, the cobbler family of desserts transfers the responsibility for ultimate success from the cook to the fruit and offer the added bonus of intending to look rustic instead of refined. For what more could the cook ask?
This all brings me to a puzzle—a peach puzzle to be exact. Had I heard of this exquisite baked dessert without having had the opportunity to eat it, I’d have accused the recipe-writers of trying to sneak a pie recipe under the noses of wary cooks. On the face of it, the peach puzzle really does seem to be the black sheep of the cobbler family. Relying as it does on what the recipe refers to as “the abracadabra of a magic trick” (incidentally, if you want to know if you're a baker or a cook, ask yourself whether that description tantalized or terrified you), a trick demanding inversion before serving, the puzzle seems awfully ripe with potential for disaster. It also requires some work with a rolling pin. (Admittedly not more than do a batch of biscuits, but still...) A pie in disguise is how I might have described it. This is not auspicious for the pie-wary.
Happily, a friend of mine—one who is that most secretly envied of all things, a good cook and a good baker—prepared this recipe for me from local Indiana peaches last summer and despite her mad skills, my fears were laid to rest by her assurances of its level of difficulty. The recipe (the link is here) was the grand prizewinner in a contest run by Cook’s Country Magazine (part of the America’s Test Kitchen empire) for the best heirloom recipes in the United States. It is nothing more complicated than a biscuit crust laid over some lovely ripe peeled peaches. In the middle of the dish, you place an inverted ramekin to eventually collect the juices. Before laying the crust on top, you pour a little slurry of brown sugar, melted butter, and water over the peaches to help make those juices more, well, juicy. What could be easier?
Okay, so the other night, in celebration of my birthday, I decided to make peach puzzle again. By the time we got through dinner and into the kitchen to make dessert, it was, like, 11:30-ish at night. I was tired but committed. Like the cook that I am, I cut several corners, including pretty much every step in the recipe. The result was a crust too small for the plate but I persisted. It was my birthday. I wanted dessert, dammit. After taking this out of the oven, I was pretty concerned. The “magic trick” referenced above consists of a process by which the liquid from the peaches and brown sugar mixture somehow gets sucked into the upside-down ramekin you place in the pie dish. This means that you get a crispy biscuit crust, beautifully poached peaches, and a little dish of peach syrup perfect for topping the necessary scoop of vanilla ice cream that you put on top of each serving. When I took the puzzle out of the oven this time, the juices were still in the pie dish; not in the cup. This was ominous. I let the plate cool (turns out I had forgotten this was the essential step) for the requisite half an hour and while the result was not quite as perfect as my first attempt, the magic did work, the cup did fill with the lovely syrup, and the whole thing was still delicious. (Though served about an hour after my officialy birthday had passed...). I still don’t really understand how the magic trick works save to say that it has something to do with contraction and expansion and steam (right???) but what is important is that it does work.
We have snacked on our puzzle through three nights of remedial “Mad Men” viewing, which demonstrates the extent to which the dish holds up in the fridge if you’re worried about making a large dessert for a small crowd. So, there is no excuse not to try this if peaches are anywhere in your vicinity. Hurry up, too. I can already feel the chill of fall in the air.
before the crust is place on top...
smacking of failure...not half bad for the middle of the night.
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