apple cobbler

The very first time Andrew and I had dinner, we were, technically on a non-date. He had just moved to the city and it never occurred to me that our getting together was anything more than a new person looking for a familiar face to break bread with. I remembered how it was for me to move to New York – I didn’t know a soul, save for my roommate who pulled investment banking hours and spent her remaining free time with her boyfriend. It was lonely, stressful and overwhelming. I thought perhaps he might be going through the same thing and wanted to see a familiar face.

I, on the other hand, had other ideas. While I didn’t want to project an obligatory date, fearing rejection and embarrassment, I picked what I thought to be the perfect restaurant for a nice dinner that was relaxed enough to be construed as casual, but suggested subtle date-like hints. Braeburn was that restaurant – it had everything I wanted: lovely, thoughtful and comforting food; gracious and knowledgeable staff who knew the difference between attentive and overbearing; a room large enough for a few tables, but small enough for a quiet conversation; and a cozy, welcoming, and warm ambiance. Braeburn has and continues to strike me as a place that wants you to feel more like you’re in someone’s home than a formal restaurant, and I mean that in the best possible way.

I knew I was in trouble before we ordered wine. Talking to Andrew felt so natural and easy, it like coming home. We talked, laughed, ate, and passed forkfuls of food over to each other’s plates. By the end of the meal, we were sharing dessert, spooning apple cobbler out of a single ramekin. I should have known right away it wasn’t just plain dinner, but when you’re shy and doubt yourself, you don’t look at evidence in a logical fashion. You just figure that neither one of you is hungry enough for a separate dessert, and you both love apple cobbler, so sharing makes perfect sense.

Cobbler, one of Andrew’s favorite desserts, becomes his true pièce de résistance with apples. The cobbler that evening, warm with a scoop of ice cream on top, was magnificent. We talk about that evening all the time – though we talk as much of the circumstance as we do of the dessert itself. I suppose that was our “Lady & the Tramp” moment, sharing cobbler like that.

Knowing what you do already of me though, it should by now be obvious that it takes me forever to get around to something here. Since it only took me six months to make Andrew’s favorite soup, it’s only fitting that six months went by before I made apple cobbler. Anything earlier would somehow be a lapse in my standards. Though to be fair, fall is the season for apple cobbler – I’m not so much in the mood for it in the summer months. I want berries and stone fruit and pies. But as soon as I feel that fall chill in the air, and reach for hot coffee, I know that apple season has arrived. And I embrace it wholly and with abandon.

Our apartment is flooded with apples each week – I lug them from the market in crazy quantities. Some of them get cooked down into a sauce, others get eaten as a snack. Still, this might just be my favorite way, besides pie and tarte tatin to eat apple dessert. Warm and fragrant, this is the perfect end to a Sunday supper – a meal that readies you for the onslaught of the coming week. And it’s an unfussy dessert as well – one that can become part of your autumn rotation without much acrobatics. Which means, it could (and probably should) become a weekly indulgence. Darkness and cold are stressful enough – we need more rewards like this during the season.