VBS.TV Blog

WILD COBBLERATION

November 16, 2009
by EMILY RUANE

After watching audio magician RJD2 concoct both an exquisite fruit cobbler and coax some divine ambiance from his Yamaha CS-80 on Electric Independence, I knew I wanted to participate in this experience on some level. Since I’m not so hot at the keyboards, I decided to try to my luck in the kitchen and have a go at making a fruit cobbler based on RJ’s recipe. The cooking instructions, replete with Journey references and philosophical musings about the hierarchy of can openers, reveal the DJ’s disdain for overly sweet and buttery cobblers. He counsels against using “a whole gang of butter” and other enemies of taste and waistline.

I was happy too that the recipe included a dose of salt: An ingredient whose presence in dessert is a sure sign of refinement. Like Del Posto’s Mark Ladner, who commends pastry chef Brooks Headley’s ability to manipulate salt in an otherwise sweet milieu, I get jazzed on snacks like oatmeal with sea salt and agave nectar, or homemade caramels littered carelessly with crystals of crunchy salt. It’s a combination not unlike the prom-dress-and-combat-boot phenomenon of the early 90s, but that’s a post for another day.

Read on for the play-by-play of this wild culinary ride.

1.

The player’s ball. Highlights include rare (probably not) early-nineties Pyrex mixing bowl and “cute” Polish butter from Rachel’s Corner.

2.

Nature’s bounty!

3.

Mauling nature’s bounty.

4.

Measuring the oats.

5.

Next, we added flour. Here you can see the measuring cup sticking provocatively out of the flour.

6.

Flour sifted, as per RJ’s instructions.

7.

Once we assembled all of the dry ingredients, we added the wet. See that egg? It was actually supposed to go with the fruit. Whoops.

8.

The unceremonious heaping of dry topping onto unsuspecting fruit.

9.

Don’t you love this dish?

10.

Into the yawning void of hellfire goes our cobbler. Here’s where the raw ingredients will have their chemistry completely altered; each delicate enzymes broken down one screaming centigrade at a time.

11.

30 minutes later it emerged flat and wan; we, incredulous.

12.

I cannot with a good conscience call this a dessert.

13.

We salvaged the cobbler with the Michael Clayton of dessert food. Have you met my friend H. Dazs? No—that’s too obvious. We’ll call him Haagen D.

I left several ingredients out, like brown sugar, baking powder, and most importantly, enough fruit. My roommate likened its consistency to that of a whole wheat pita, while my visiting galpal decided that it reminded her of a Nutri-Grain bar. I am eating it right now and there are still some dry parts underneath, but I am really hungry.

Try it on your own with RJ’s original instructions:

FILLING:
peaches
blackberries
1 egg
touch of agave nectar
touch of milk

TOPPING:
~1 cup flour
dash salt
~1 cup oats
1/3 stick of butter, room temp
cinnamon(to taste)
milk
just a touch of brown sugar

ASSEMBLY:
Spray a pan w/ canola oil spray, or however you like to keep things from sticking. The filling can be blended any way you wanna(insert journey joke here), as long as the egg is mixed. On my lazier days, I actually mix the filling in the pan. Sometimes you just don’t give a shit. Anyway, get the filling in the pan somehow. Then, blend the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl or large measuring cup. If you are a tightwad who has a different can opener for your dog food, then you have a sifter, so you can sift. If you are a slob, you don’t have a sifter. I’m in between: I own one, but hate cleaning it, so I just blend in the bowl. Next, add the butter. Mash it into the dry stuff with a fork; you want this to eventually look flaky, like pie crust does before you add the water. NO big chunks of butter. Now, spread over topping. Then, sprinkle some milk over the dry topping til it just BARELY looks wet. Bake for 30 min at 375. Check it: if the topping is still dry in any spots, sprinkle more milk.

Yes, I am aware that this is probably not the right way to make cobbler at all. Save your breath. I tried following recipes, and they just weren’t working for me, so I went down to basic common sense, and worked my way up to this. There you have it.