JOY ALONG THE WAY: PEACH COBBLER WITH A SURPRISE INSIDE

We speak of cobbling something together, usually meaning that we take different materials and put them together in a rather clumsy fashion. The early shoemakers were called cobblers. Are they still? A friend has told me that he has filled in the blank asking for occupation with "cobbler," having recently changed it from "shepherd." With no perfected pattern to shape something to fit a foot it must had resulted in a clumsy looking article.

Is there a connection between that meaning of a cobbler and the deep dish fruit pie? Did the early cooks just throw some pieces of dough into a a deep dish of fruit, slip it into the oven and call the baked result a cobbler?

Anyway, like the now perfectly made shoe, the fruit cobbler, too, has reached an elevated state.

Let us discuss the peach cobbler since this is the season. First, select peaches that are in the perfect stage of ripeness -- not too soft, not too hard. Peel them with loving care. Split one open. Remove the stone. Contemplate that stone for a while. Why is it so wrinkled? Does it keep the peach fruit from falling apart? Should you plant the stone somewhere and, hopefully, have your own home-grown peaches? It doesn't work that way. You might get a peach but "it won't be after its own kind." I've tried. Should you crack the stone open and taste, once again, the peculiar bitter tang of it, it might bring you back to the task at hand, after you've eaten a generous slice of peach to take the taste out of you mouth.

There are two schools of thought about whether to put a bottom crust in the dish. Some do. Some don't. I don't. But I put a fancy layer in the middle.

After slicing the peaches, eye measuring the amount you think will fill the dish, you mix the sugar, flour and a smidgen of cinnamon if you like this touch of taste. I add a half smidgen of salt too. No recipe book that I have mentions this salt. It's a Jean thing.

Sprinkle this mixture over the peaches, working it in by hand. Put half of them into the baking dish and generously dot with butter. Then, here comes my artistic inner layer, not noticed by a lot of eaters of my cobblers. I roll my crust out, or if you're not good with making crust you can unfold one of the already made ones by Pillsbury. Then I reach for my snowflake cookie cutter and cut out a suitable number of "flakes" to cover the peaches. Here you may be so satisfied with yourself you may stop to eat another slice of peach, cinnamoned and sugared.

So, the top layer of peaches goes in, more dots of butter and the top crust. I just can't leave these cookie cutters alone, so, picking out a tiny one, a star, I roll the dough thinner and put a double decker of them around the rim. In the middle of the completed top crust I puncture the identification, PC. That is, if I plan to put it in the freezer. But not many pastries around here get put into a freezer. The PC could mean Personal Comforter, Peachy Comestible, Perfectled Cobbled, anything but Personal Computer

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.