Reading one of my favorite blogs, Cup of Jo, awhile ago brought me to an excellent article on The Awl. The prompt was "what have you learned?" and readers answered with everything from the hilarious ("plastic grocery bags stuck in trees are called witch’s britches") to the practical ("two ice cubes is the right amount to immediately bring a fresh cup of hot tea down to a more drinkable temperature") to the deeply wise ("I’m smarter and more powerful than I believe I am"). Another notable entry made me happy to discover that I am, in fact, not the only person in the world who didn't know how to spell/pronounce segue properly. And it all got me thinking about what I've learned.
Or let's loosen that prompt. Expand it beyond the grandiose what I know now to a collection of little clever things that make your day better or happier.
What are small customs or bits of knowledge you've picked up that aren’t commonly known or widely used by others? Have you accumulated tips and ideas and items that might surprise people and make their days better?
Or maybe your “like list” right now isn’t surprising, per se, but could still serve as a reminder to others in the “hey! remember these great things?” sort of way.
As a creature of very specific habits, I feel like my life is a ever-constant discovery of these types of things—a changing list of practices I am very very into and love and want to tell everyone. But, you're everyone! So here are a few for your Thursday, some recent and some dating as far back as second grade, but still applicable. Please tell me some of yours!
- Peanut butter and iceberg lettuce sandwiches are oddly delicious.
- However, the best summer sandwich: thick slices of seedy bread (to make a good loaf at home, try adding this harvest grains blend to a basic white sandwich loaf recipe), lightly toasted, with a generous swipe of Hellman's mayo. Sprinkle the mayo with Jane's Salt, then pile on as many sliced Kirby cucumbers as you can fit without them falling out everywhere. Eat. [Editor’s note: If you desperately love tomatoes, unlike me who likes them the normal amount, then your version of this will involve the mayo and salt but will use squishy white bread, very lightly toasted, and thick slices of ripe beefsteak or heirloom tomatoes.)
- The era of 90’s romantic comedies (You’ve Got Mail, Pretty Woman, Dave, My Best Friend’s Wedding) was a good one. Revisit these.
- Cut spaghetti squash crosswise instead of lengthwise to get longer, noodle-like strands (more on this soon).
- The song “Roses” by GASHI. Listen immediately.
- You will never regret standing up and taking a walk.
- Organize your books by color.
- Make a double or triple batch of pizza dough (or buy some from a local pizzeria if you’re more into that route) and refrigerate it for a few days. Instead of turning it all into pizza, take a large handful and press or roll it as thinly as possible onto an oiled baking sheet and sprinkle it with flaky salt and sesame seeds. Bake at 400 degrees until crispy and golden, then break it up into crackers!
- Take 5 minutes before bed. Lie down on your back on a carpeted floor: stretch your legs and arms out straight and lie perfectly still for 2 minutes. Sit up and touch your toes, lie back down, and repeat. Seriously soothing.
- Transfer your olive oil to an inexpensive plastic squeeze bottle (like these). This will improve your cooking life dramatically.
- Unsubscribe from as many marketing emails as possible. Just do it.
- Start buying only one type of socks. (WHY HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?)
- Cobbler is a highly underrated old-school dessert and should be brought back into regular rotation.
On that last topic, let’s discuss cobblers.
Cobbler falls into a category of humble fruit desserts, many of which have fallen out of favor among modern bakers, which is a shame. I just finished editing a chapter for a cookbook on these, and learned a lot about the nuanced distinctions between funny-named recipes like grunt, pandowdy, slump, buckle, crisp, cobbler, and the like.
The takeaway: most are named for practical reasons. A buckle is so called because the batter “buckles” in the center as it bakes. The same for a slump. A crisp is…well, crisp. A grunt apparently makes a “grunting” sound as it bakes (unlikely, but okay)—it’s similar to a cobbler although it’s baked on the stovetop, as is a slump, whereas a cobbler and crisp are baked in the oven. All involve stewed/cooked fruit beneath some sort of batter, whether a biscuit dough or cake batter or streusel-type situation.
Crisps are still pretty popular, but you don’t hear much about the others. Cobblers are one of my favorites, both because they’re quick and easy to make and because they’re delicious.
I make my cobbler with a cream-based biscuit recipe, but truly you can do a choose-your-own-adventure cobbler by pairing the filling for any fruit pie recipe with any biscuit recipe for the topping.
A cream-based biscuit is simplicity at its finest—there’s no need to fuss about with cold butter, plus it makes a very tender biscuit. And if you want an especially tender biscuit, use pastry flour, but all-purpose will do just fine.
A note on the filling: If you use ripe summer fruit at its peak, you really don’t need much sugar at all. If your fruit isn’t particularly juicy and ripe, you may want to add some in. It’s up to you: if you like sweeter desserts, by all means up the sugar quantity. It won’t affect the end result in terms of texture or bakeability so you can easily customize it. I use cornstarch as my thickener here, but you can use flour or a pie thickener—just know that the quantity for the thickening agent is also going to vary based on your fruit. If your fruit is, again, very ripe and juicy, you may need slightly more thickener to avoid having an overly soupy filling. It’s hard to gauge before baking however, but don’t worry too much about it. Because cobbler is spooned out rather than sliced like a fruit pie, it’s no big deal if the filling is rather liquidy. In that case, I like to refrigerate it overnight and eat it cold.
Peach Berry Cobbler
Makes one 9” round dish
For the biscuit topping
2 cups (240g) all-purpose flour or pastry flour (227g)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1 to 1 1/4 cups (227g to 283g) heavy cream, plus more for brushing
For the filling
4 ripe peaches, peeled and sliced
2 cups berries
juice of one lemon
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9” pie plate or round cake pan.
For the biscuits: Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Add 1 cup of the cream and stir with a fork until the dough starts to come together. The dough shouldn’t be wet, but it should pull together enough to hold together when you pinch it. If it’s too dry, add the remaining 1/4 cup of cream (drizzle it in one tablespoon at a time and stop when you have the right consistency of dough).
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and press it into a disc, about 1” thick. Use a round cutter to cut out circles of dough.
For the filling: Whisk together the sugar and cornstarch, then combine all the filling ingredients in a bowl and toss to coat well.
Spoon the fruit into your prepared pan and top with the biscuit rounds, trying to leave as little space as possible. You can always re-roll the scraps and squish them into whatever spaces are left.
Brush the tops of the biscuits with heavy cream and bake for about 45 minutes, or until the biscuits are golden brown and any visible fruit is bubbling.
Remove from the oven and let cool. It’s delicious when served warm, but it will be much more liquidy if you do that, so if you can wait, do!