The Town Crier: Cobbler

Published 12:01 am Sunday, August 12, 2018

This is not a food column, although I frequently write about food. I would consider, however, this to be an eating column because I’m going to write about one of the best things in the world to eat, Southern-style cobbler. If, after reading the name of this article, you were looking forward to this being about shoemakers, you will be disappointed. That’s the wrong kind of cobbler. Today’s cobbler is about a dish that’s often the best part of the meal. And, because it’s got fruit in it, is obviously healthy and good for you, right?

A fruit cobbler, for the uninitiated (and that’s a sad thought), is a type of sweet, fruit-baked dish where the fruit is intermingled with dough. The dough forms a crust and/or dumplings and can be either a top-only crust, a top-and-bottom crust or a crust that intermingles with the fruit. Depending on how you make it, it might be different, but it will always be good. In a lifetime of eating cobbler I’ve never had one I didn’t like.

An improvement

Cobbler is truly an American invention, having gotten its start in the English colonies and reached its highest form in the South. The name “cobbler” shows up before the Civil War, but it’s unclear where it came from. Some think it comes from an old name for a wooden bowl, cobeler, indicating where the dough was mixed for the dish.

The English make a type of suet pudding which can be sweet or savory and is made by boiling or steaming a mixture that includes suet, obviously, which is beef or mutton fat, and then mixed with other ingredients like spices and raisins. But because of a lack of ingredients and cooking equipment, these suet puddings, like English Christmas pudding, treacle pudding (treacle is a form of molasses) and jam roly-poly, weren’t made much here and a substitute took its place in the meal. The substitute was a simpler fare but as far as I’m concerned an improvement.

Dessert perfection

Sundays after church the lunch was always at my grandparents. Two words: peach cobbler. To see one of those Georgia state fruit wonders come piping hot out of the oven while the peachy syrup was still bubbling was to get a glimpse of dessert perfection. My grandmother could whip up a cobbler with one measuring spoon tied behind her back. If it was winter or early spring she would use canned peaches.

The cobbler was delicious. But if it was summertime and the fresh peaches were coming in, why, the smell alone could almost put me in a stupor of cobbler goodness. Spooning up the peaches with that incredible bread crust was to put a little taste of heaven in your mouth. The bread part … was it like a biscuit or a pie crust or her award-winning rolls? Like those, but different and better. The dollops of bread she made were light, fluffy and sweet, and they browned perfectly, timed with the cooking of the peaches under them. It was more than a dessert, it was a work of art.

A surprise was in store for me one time at my grandparents. My grandmother pulled the cobbler from the oven but it wasn’t peaches. This cobbler was dark blue, almost purple (and a royal purple at that). This cobbler was made with fresh blueberries. A friend of hers had gone to one of those “U-Pick-Em” blueberry farms and loaded up on those sweet little blue balls of yummy. She had brought them to my grandmother knowing she would give them the cobbler treatment.

The blueberries melded with the batter, and in the cooking process suffused the blueberry sweetness into the dough. I asked my grandmother if she had ever made a blueberry cobbler before. She told me this was her first one. I was amazed that her first try at something had come out so perfectly. Little did I know that a cobbler recipe is pretty standard for whatever fruit you use. She had experimented with the blueberries and I declared the experiment a success! I’m sure my tongue and lips were blue for days afterward which is about how long the smile on my face lasted once that blueberry cobbler had put it on there.

‘Just taste it’

Although peach was the go-to cobbler, my grandmother never stopped experimenting. I came in once and when she pulled the cobbler from the oven I was hit with an aroma, a delicious aroma, mind you, that I had never smelled before. And the cobbler was a pink color.

“What kind of cobbler is this?” I wanted to know. “Just taste it” was the reply. She got me a spoon and dipped a bite out of the corner and blew on it to cool it down. She handed me the spoon and leaned her head back to take in my reaction.

This was the first time I had ever tasted this taste. It was sweet and tangy. I couldn’t identify what kind of fruit it was although there was something familiar about it. Looking at the pink color the only thing I could think of was that she had somehow managed to make a watermelon cobbler, but I knew that wasn’t right. What was this? I begged to know.

She had made a strawberry and rhubarb cobbler. I didn’t even know what rhubarb was. The strawberry gave the dish its reddish tint and was the familiar note I tasted. But the rhubarb was clearly the tangy ingredient and somehow the two flavors complemented each other wonderfully. It was years before I even saw a picture of rhubarb, a stalky plant with big leaves that somehow reminds me of a celery stalk. The mix of strawberry and rhubarb was such a hit that she made a cobbler of it several more times and also worked it into pies once in a while.

Why was it so good?

Peach cobbler was the mainstay of cobblers at my grandmother’s, but it had a rival as far as what was my favorite. In the middle of summer we would suddenly have an outbreak of blackberry cobblers. Peach cobbler had been going along for some time and then the blackberries came in. And you know why the thick, dark, blackberry cobbler was so good? Because I had helped pick the berries. There’s nothing quite as delicious as food that you helped procure. There has never been a grocery store tomato that can match the flavor of a tomato from one of your own tomato plants. And so it is with blackberries (or any fruit) that you picked yourself.

Sitting down to a warm plate of that blackberry nirvana made all those briar pricks and chigger bites suffered in getting the blackberries from the thicket at the far end of the yard worth it. Out in the summer sun with a pan and trying to fill it deep enough for your grandmother to say “Well, that’s probably enough for a cobbler” was heroic work indeed. And then to sit there at the table with the rest of the family and to be able to say “I helped pick the berries” made it so much the better. And yes, there was the occasional red berry in there, picked before it was ripe by some little hand that was in a hurry, but can you blame me? I had a cobbler to get going.

An extra little something to chew on

With the autumn bounty from Ellijay coming in, we would move into a season of apple cobblers interspersed over the meals. When it comes to apple desserts my favorite was my grandmother’s fried pies, but that took a while as she hand-made each one and fried them in her world famous skillet. But when a crowd was coming to eat she could take the apples and serve them up in a cobbler in no time.

Sometime the apples would be peeled to produce a smooth texture. Other times she would make them with the peels on and you got a little texture and an extra little something to chew on. We were always told that the peeling has extra vitamins in them. And after all, there is something traditional and homey and American about eating apples, so eating an apple cobbler seemed patriotic.

You can’t go wrong

I know a Brazilian lady in town and if you know me at all you know who I’m talking about. She had enjoyed several cobblers when she first moved here and being unfamiliar with this delicious dessert, she asked one of her hostesses for a recipe for cobbler. Armed with the recipe, she decided one day to try it out and put her culinary skills to the cobbler test.

Her husband, a Georgian by birth and with a lifetime of cobbler-eating experience, was leaving for work. She informed him of her attempt that day of a cobbler. What kind should she make, she asked him. Any fruit will do, he told her … apple, peach, berry.

When he got home that evening, the warm, sweet smell of a cobbler greeted him. And yet, there was something unique about it. She told him she had succeeded at her first attempt at a cobbler. “And what kind did you make?” he asked his Brazilian bride. “Banana!” she proudly proclaimed. And you know what … it was delicious. Let’s face it, you can’t go wrong with cobbler.

Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.