Un/Happy Accident
This was the result of a happy accident.
Well, actually, it was unhappy. But it was certainly unexpected.
I was happy to be asked to pick up the weekly allotment of a colleague's share of their CSA delivery. Community Supported Agriculture. This is locally-grown, farm-fresh produce. I was being given the vegetables due to a sudden, unhappy change in schedule.
But I was happy to accept them.
And then I forgot to get the vegetables. Luckily, I got a call reminding me to pick them up. I grabbed the nearest bag I had with me and headed out.
My bag wasn't nearly big enough!
I was picking up eggplant, yellow squash, tomatoes, onions, butter lettuce, bell peppers, garlic, corn, cantaloupe, and raspberries. And since I ended up being the last person to show up for the pick up, I helped clean out the leftover vegetables. More tomatoes, more onions, more bell peppers, more raspberries.
I was thrilled to be getting all this produce!
But I had been warned that the raspberries had seen better days. It was true. The farm folks had let them sit a bit too long.
The raspberries on top looked good enough to me, so I took lots. They wouldn't go to waste.
Gluten-Free Raspberry-Apple Cobbler
After getting home with my spoils, it was clear that the raspberries had to be dealt with immediately. I had been thinking about making a raspberry pie, but in reality, these berries were well past their prime and a pie is best when the fruit is at their peak.
These were past peak.
These needed to be cooked. And soon.
Given that we had little other fruit at that moment to use with the raspberries and seeing how late in the evening it was getting, we settled on a gluten-free cobbler. Quick, easy, and painless. We had apples on hand, so we used those to fill it out.
We worked quickly to get the cobbler together so that we would have dessert ready to eat after dinner. My husband gently picked through and cleaned the raspberries. They were readily falling apart.
My daughter wanted to do the gluten-free cobbler biscuit dough. We used sorghum flour, white rice flour, brown rice flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, xanthan gum, cold margarine, and milk with a bit of vinegar (since we didn't have any buttermilk on hand). She measured everything out, cut the margarine into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender, and then mixed in the combined milk and vinegar. Then she set aside the dough until we were ready for it.
I chopped the apples and prepared the fruit, adding some sugar and a bit of lemon juice and corn starch, and mixing with the raspberries very gently.
I put the fruit mixture in the oven and baked it for about 20 minutes. The apples needed enough time to soften and the mixture needed to get hot and bubbly. Then I took it out and added the dough to the top. I struggled a bit to get biscuit-sized spoonfuls dropped onto the fruit. I made sure not to cover the fruit with a complete layer of dough, so that the fruit and juices could bubble up between the dough balls. Then I put it back in the oven for another 25 minutes or so.
I can't quite call these biscuits, but they were quite tasty with the fruit. I have a gluten-free recipe for biscuits that make better biscuits than what you see above. All that hurrying to drop the dough onto the top of the hot fruit left these "biscuits" rather spiky-looking. But they browned nicely and they tasted just fine for this purpose.
Look at that red! And oh, the flavor! The raspberries were so strong in flavor! Delicious! The raspberries and apples cooked together very nicely and the topping was browned just right.
This turned out to be a quick and perfect use for all those overripe raspberries! So fruity and summery!
A great way to use up summer fruit! Perfect for just any fruit though.
ReplyDelete