Herself's Recipes

2/3 cup couscous
1 cup water
1 T honey

1/4 t cinnamon
6 dates diced
1/2 cup pistachio nuts

Bring the water to a boil, add honey, and couscous and cook until water is absorbed and couscous is tender.

Add diced dates, tangerines, pistachios and cinnamon. Stir.

Serve at room temperature. Serves 2 as breakfast, dessert or a side dish.

Couscous is a staple food in Northern Africa. It’s made from crushed wheat semolina. It’s as easy to cook as rice, faster and can be used in place of rice or pasta in many recipes.

Peach cobbler is an old favorite of mine. In the last few years I started making it with ginger biscuits. Truth is I usually use Bisquick, but the following baking soda biscuit recipe works well too. Once you have the batter mixed take about a 1/4 cup of crystallized ginger, chop it fine and mix it in before cooking the biscuits.

Biscuits

2 cup flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 Tablespoon of sugar

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup milk

1/4 cup of crystallized ginger chopped fine.

We recently acquired a gourmet English restaurant in the area. They used pears with crystallized ginger biscuits in their cobbler. I liked it very much. The second time I had it they placed a tiny square, perhaps 1″x1″x very thin chocolate under the biscuit. I liked it better with out the chocolate but you might try it both ways and see what you think.

Peach filling

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 Tablespoon flour

1 dozen peaches, peeled and sliced

Mix the sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and flour well. Then add peach slices and mix to coat.

Pear filling

1 teaspoon orange peel

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 Tablespoon flour

1/2 cup sugar

12 pears, peeled and sliced

Mix orange peel, cinnamon, flour and sugar. Add pear slices and mix to coat.

Divide either your peach or pear filling among 12 cobbler cups. Cook at 350 about 20 minutes. Spoon biscuit filling on to top of fruit and cook about 10-15 minutes longer until biscuits just start to brown.

Top with a spoonful of whipped cream if desired.

Fruit cobblers were first made in America in the western part of the nation where they were served as breakfast. It wasn’t until the early 1900s they they began to migrate to the dessert menu. The name cobbler for cooked fruit pies with crusts came into use in 1864 in a Yale Literary Magazine in a list of things to be given up during training.