peach - blueberry cobbler

You know it's summer when there is peach juice dripping down your chin and onto your nice white jeans. But heck, those jeans have seen worse; like the dollop of ketchup that went swiftly from hamburger to pants or the grass stains from that intense game of lakeside badminton (btw badminton is waaay harder than it looks). So why not add a little blueberry stain to those pants and paint them patriotic in the spirit of July 4th. No summer evening picnic, especially a 4th of July picnic, is complete without a cobbler - an ooey gooey, blueberry bubbling, peach perfecting, buttery brown biscuit topped, cobbler. I dare you to find a more appropriate summer dessert. And did I mention the scoop of vanilla ice cream that goes on top and slowly melts into the hot fruit filling? No, I think I forgot that because I was too busy eating leftover ice cream out of the container with a spoon.

This is the perfect dessert to make this week as both the farmers markets and the super markets are laden with peaches, nectarines and blueberries. It's also very quick and easy to prepare, involving little prep time and utilizing ingredients you are likely to have on hand. I whipped it up, stuck it in the oven, put on my white jeans and by the time it was ready so was I, and off to Lake Luzern we went for a picnic by the lake. Zach's friend Andry and Andry's wife Andrea have a house in Beckenreid, right on the lake. It really couldn't have been a more idyllic spot for a Saturday afternoon picnic.

I also want to mention before diving into a sea of blueberries that this post is working double duty today. The cobbler is being featured as 'The Recipe of the Week' on 'My Girlfriend Guide to Zürich' which is very fun and exciting. If you are a first time visitor to the Haus then welcome! And if you haven't been to My Girlfriend Guide (formerly American Girl in Zürich) then you should definitely check it out. Deja and Angelica are working away to make sure everyone is caught up on exciting Zürich happenings.

The View. Capitalized because I'm not sure there is any other view. Insane right? Especially considering that the lawn runs right down to the turquoise water. You could run out your door and straight into the lake every morning if you lived there. If you lived there...that's the goal. Upon seeing the house and the view I promptly told Zach that, please, thank you, I would like a lake house. Ooo and a boat. And yes a car would be good to, so that we can zip to the house whenever we please. Sigh, once again, Talley dreams...snap back to reality and back to that peach cobbler...

I went to the Bürkliplatz market on Friday morning, bright and early, or at least early enough to beat the 9am rush. I often forget about the market, too distracted by my morning cup of coffee to remember that only a few blocks away vendors are selling all sorts of fresh produce. It's definitely more expensive than the supermarket and I often suspect you are buying the same thing, but it's always fun to shop there, practice my non-existant German and do a bit of people watching.
I was dead set on a nectarine-blueberry cobbler. But then I bought peaches. The nectarines were rock hard and since I wanted to make the cobbler the same day I had to find some riper fruit and that's where the peaches came in. I didn't realize when I bought them that they would have a bright red outer layer of flesh, but really it just made for a pretty picture as the taste is pretty much the same. What's really surprising is that although there are roughly 2lbs of peaches in the cobbler, the resulting taste is overwhelmingly blueberry. The peaches get left in the dust. They do help to add a bit of bulk to the dessert and every once and a while you get a great juicy peach bite and you remember that there are indeed peaches lost somewhere midst the oozing purply bluish bluberries.
Recipe adapted from alexandracooks.com

Filling ingredients

- 2 pounds peaches or nectarines

- 3 cups blueberries

- 1/4 cup sugar

- 1 tablespoon cornstarch

- zest from 1 lime or lemon

- 1 tablespoon lime/lemon juice

- 1/4 teaspoon salt

Biscuit topping

- 2 cups flour

- 1/3 cup sugar

- 2 teaspoons baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 1 stick cold butter (1/2 cup or 113g)

- 1 cup buttermilk

- 1/4 tsp vanilla bean

- 2 teaspoons coarse sugar

Preheat the oven to 375F (190C). While the oven is warming up slice your peaches into generous sections, roughly eight slices per peach. Mix the peaches in a bowl with the blueberries. In that same bowl add the sugar, cornstarch, lemon/lime zest, lemon/lime juice and salt. Stir until the fruit is evenly coated. Place that bowl aside.

In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Once thoroughly whisked, add the butter. I use my hand to integrate the butter into the flour mixture, squeezing the butter between my fingers until there are no chunks of butter larger than a pea. In a measuring cup add the buttermilk and vanilla and whisk until incorporated. Slowly stir in the liquid into the flour mixture. The dough will be fairly sticky, but don't worry; the biscuits will end up fluffy, browned and absolutely delicious.

Place the fruit filling in your baking dish. I used an 8.5" x 10.5" dish. Dollop about eight balls of dough over the fruit. Sprinkle with coarse sugar and place in the oven for roughly 50 minutes. Begin to check on it after 40 minutes. When the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are lightly browned and toasted your dessert is done. Enjoy with vanilla ice cream!

The German word of the weekend was schön. Schön means beautiful, and let me tell you everything was freaking schön this weekend; the steaks with seared grill marks, the prosecco, our new friends, the kräuter butter (herb butter) on bread, the kids running around with water-balloons and the view, oh that view! After eating and then waiting the mandatory twenty minutes Zach and I went swimming. Brrrrrrr, but refreshing. Sehr schön (very beautiful!).

The cobbler was definitely a huge hit. Phew! You never know, especially since I couldn't really try it beforehand and offer it to our new friends with a big hunk taken out. I knew it smelled good and it certainly looked damn good so I'm glad it actually was good. I think someone actually referred to it as schön!! It was a bit precarious to transport on the tram then the train and then the car, but it held up well and thankfully Zach was keenly aware of making sure it was level at all times.

And finally...a picture of us! Much requested, but often hard to pull off. The camera seems to become an appendage and I often forget I can easily hand it to someone else so they can snap a picture of us. It's nice to have pictures of things besides food in my iphoto library!
mmmm...buttermilk biscuit floating on a sea of blueberries. Unfortunately this time around we didn't get to add the ice cream because, well it wouldn't have faired very well on the hour long trip to Beckenreid. But it's a perfect reason to make it again soon, very very soon.
Pretty nice place to spend a day huh? We certainly thought so. Eventually the lakeside chill forced us inside with our Appenzeller. I'm guessing you're not familiar with Appenzeller, the drink not the cheese. I wasn't either until Saturday. It's made of 42 herbs (kräuter), you serve it over ice, and only two people know the secret recipe. Oh, and it's delicious and I definitely need to buy a bottle. Unfortunately I took a photo of the backside of the bottle, but the front side has a cool image of the mountains and even makes you think this stuff, and its herbs, might actually be good for you. Don't be fooled, it's potent.

Overall we had an absolutely amazing weekend and I hope you did too! If you're in the states it's still the weekend because today is the 4th!! Happy celebrating and would you please light a sparkler and eat a hamburger on the beach for me! oh the beach...I really miss the beach and the waves and even the seaweed that washes up on shore. Zach and I played a little game this weekend called 'What would we be doing if we were in Little Compton right now?' I think maple syrup was mentioned at least five times with jumping off the bluff a close second.

If you ventured over from MyGirlfriendGuide then I hope you enjoyed the recipe and accompanying pictures and that you'll be back again soon. If you ever need a friend to share a cobbler with just let me know. I'll bring the ice cream, and I just might even splurge on a 14franc pint of Haagen Dazs for you.

dinner scenes

Sit me at a table, surround me with food and friends and I'm a happy girl. I'm the type of person who loves the pre-party more than the actual party. I love to be surrounded by friends in a space where it is easy to talk and fun to laugh. Pre-party is really a word of the past, from those days in college when we'd all gather in one room and turn on some Justin Timberlake or 'Murder on the Dance Floor' on repeat. Those days aren't gone, but they are certainly slowing down, and it seems like the pre-party and the party have become one in the same. Dinner is the main event. The table full of food and friends and the fridge full with a few bottles of wine. People eat slowly, lingering over dishes, too busy talking to worry themselves with seconds. Then dessert and accompanying spoons arrive on the table and the cheese board is visited once again, but this time with small savory bites, eaten alone, without crackers. The conversation lingers over current happenings - in Zürich or abroad, local or political.

These dinners rarely make it to the blog. Pieces of the meals do, most frequently the desserts, since they are easy to prep ahead of time and easy to photograph. Today's photos are a little 'ode to the dinner party,' a mini dinner party that we've been having for the last four months. You see, our friend Jess moved in with us in March. We've been eating dinners, the three of us, since she arrived. She's left for the states this morning and when she returns she's moving into her own apartment (hopefully one with a big terrace) and so ends the streak of mini dinner parties. Of course she always has an invitation to dinner and I'd like to think she'd still keep coming every night, but lives get busy and it just isn't realistic. It was great because I'm a reluctant host, not one to invite a few couples to dinner without massively prepping first. But since Jess lived with us I didn't need to worry and just did what I'd normally do and just set the table for three. I think that is an attitude I need to adopt going forward - invite people over and just go with it.

A frequent meal on our table isn't really a proper meal. We call it the smorgas-board. It's a mix of apples, bread, cheese, salami on a cutting board, accompanied by whatever leftovers might be stirring in the fridge, and of course a little bite of something sweet for dessert. What was also interesting about our dinners is that Jess is gluten free and if you've been reading this blog you don't need to read too far to witness my love affair with bread. I eat it all day, at every meal. Anyway living gluten free at dinner as taught me a few things - to make a killer parmesan risotto and a delicious pesto quinoa, two dishes I now love.

Earlier this week on Tuesday, we went to the park for an evening picnic. There were four of us and I must have made enough food for a family of twelve, twelve hungry bears. We didn't get there until about 9pm and it was still entirely packed. There was a smokey haze floating just over everyone's heads from all of the grills going. We don't have a grill yet so we just went with the cold salads and cheese, but it was delicious and fun to be surrounded by so many other people. Our friend Taryn brought cheddar cheese to the picnic and I think Zach might have consumed 3/4 of the block. Not a cheddar intake I'm unfamiliar with considering my dad must eat a block a day, and when he's feeling generous, a little shaved off for the dogs. Zach was in absolute cheese heaven. I look for cheddar when I'm at the market, but not all markets carry it so we rarely have it. It's probably better this way...

For the picnic I made corn salad, potato salad, watermelon-greek panzanella and pesto-roasted tomato quinoa. I know, I told you, I made a lot. And then there was the cheese that Taryn brought and the chocolate chip cookies that I couldn't help but make just before we walked over. Mmm summer picnics.
I had made so much food for the picnic that we had an indoor picnic with leftovers last night and I think we will do the same tonight. Although, all that is left tonight is the potato salad and the quinoa, which Zach isn't too fond of. Sounds like it will be another smorgas-board type of night, some cheese, some fruit and leftovers...ooo and those cookies. I might have to run to the market for some vanilla ice cream and make cookie ice cream sandwiches.