Tomato Cobbler on Rainy Night

Regardless of whether or not I’m having eight people or one person over for dinner, I feel like I need to make something out of the ordinary. I think that feeling has grown stronger since I moved uptown and know most people have a longer commute to join me at my table.

Last Thursday I had plenty of food in my fridge, it was pouring rain, I was slammed at work and I was running late to relieve the sitter. I tried to convince myself to throw together a nice meal with the ingredients already in my fridge, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful heirloom mini-tomatoes I had seen at the market the day before. (Why didn’t I buy them the day before? My ability to be organized has gone down the tube.) So I pushed my way off the subway past a maze of umbrellas and made a beeline for the tomatoes.

Once dry and warm in my apartment, I got to work making a tomato cobbler that caught my eye on Lottie and Doof. It’s a fairly time consuming but easy recipe that lent itself well to slow preparation, a glass of wine and a chat with my friend Laura. I followed the recipe below fairly closely – carmelizing the onion and garlic mixture, making dough with cold butter, cream and Gruyere and baking it all for an hour. I added basil (I had to use something

from my fridge) and cut back a bit on the cheese and oil.

Obviously the recipe’s success lies in the quality of the seasonal tomatoes so my rainy dash paid off. It’s very rich…deliciously rich but rich nonetheless. Next time I will try to substitute milk for the cream and cut back even more on the oil. And I’ll buy the damn tomatoes the day before. http://www.lottieanddoof.com/2011/08/tomato-cobbler/