Tales from the road: cobble, cobble, cobbler

This is a story from my road trip, about some pie that I had, and the cobblers it inspired. 

Just a few hours from home, fueled by a hankering for pie, Joe steered us from the highway to the Arrowhead Drive-In Restaurant in Milton, Pennsylvania. This was our last taste of the road.

I had been saving myself dinner at home, but sitting at the counter surrounded by octogenarian regulars I caved. We split an order of chicken and biscuits - Special Number Two.

Though the menu was for some reason irresistible, pie had been the draw and it was pie that proved to be the most redeeming of the joint's offerings.

The owner made each pie from scratch, and liked to go out back, behind the restaurant, where she planted a messy tangle of rhubarb, to give her baking a local flare.

I came home wanting desserts made with summer fruit I wished I had growing in my backyard. All summer I had been yearning for berries and peaches and plums and cherries. Quite by chance I found myself faced with two bundles of blueberries and an eagerness to not only throw them atop my morning yogurt, but also to let them star in the wonderful concoction known as cobbler.

With the opportunity to make two cobblers in the span of a week I got to try to recipes that I had my eye one. Below is a combination of the two, the recipe for a darn good cobbler.

Mostly blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuit 
adapted from Rustic Fruit Desserts and Smitten Kitchen

1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature, for dish

For fruit filling:

4 cups peaches
2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen
2/3 cups brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, about 1/2 lemon
1/2 fine sea salt


For biscuit topping: 

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup cornmeal

3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

1/2 cup buttermilk

To skin the peaches: Bring a large pot of water to boil. Slit an X in the bottom of each peach. Slide into boiling water and let sit for about 30 seconds, just enough to blanch, but not enough to cook at all. Remove them, and once cool, being peeling off the skin from the X. It should slide off easily. Pit the peaches and slice.

Preheat oven to 425°. In a medium-sized bowl, toss peaches with blueberries, sugar, flour, lemon juice, and salt. Butter the bottom of a 2-quart baking dish and gently pour the fruit mixture in.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into the dry mixture using your fingertips to blend until it has formed pea-sized balls. Stir in buttermilk with a rubber spatula until a wet, tacky dough comes together.

Plop spoonfuls of the biscuit dough over the filling; don’t worry about covering entire surface. Bake until the cobbler’s syrup is bubbly and the biscuit tops are browned, about 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving.

Best enjoyed almost immediately, but keeps for a few days in the fridge.