cherry tomato cobbler with gruyere biscuits

I couldn’t figure out what wine to serve with this. On the one hand, it’s just vegetables. On the other, the gruyere and biscuits would make it pretty rich. A medium-bodied red would have been perfect, but all I had was chianti, which seemed too Italian. A rich white would have worked too, but I didn’t have one. In the end, I went with zinfandel, slightly worried that the wine would be too rich for the food.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t just the gruyere with enough flavor to stand up to the deep wine, it was the tomatoes themselves. They might just be vegetables (fruit, whatever), but after roasting in the oven for half an hour with shallots and thyme, they were sweet and tart and jammy all at once.

The original recipe calls for leaving the grape or cherry tomatoes whole before baking, but I dislike the saggy pouches of scalding mush that whole tomatoes become once cooked. By cutting them in half, the juice can mix with the other flavors, as well as reduce into a rich, flavorful sauce. It had so much flavor, in fact, that sips of rich wine and bites of earthy spinach was absolutely required between bites. It was a perfect combination.

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Cherry Tomato Cobbler with Gruyere Biscuits (adapted from Martha Stewart via Pink Parsley)

6-8 servings

I used a mix of all-purpose white flour and of whole wheat pastry flour in the biscuits.  I only made a third of the recipe.

For the filling:
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 shallots, diced
salt
4 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon thyme leaves
3 pounds cherry tomatoes, halved
½ teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

For the biscuit topping:
2 cups (9.6 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup grated Gruyere cheese (2¼ ounces), plus 1 tablespoon, for sprinkling
1½ cups buttermilk, plus more for brushing

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a 9-by-13-inch casserole dish with nonstick spray.

2. For the filling: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add the shallots and a pinch of salt and cook just until the shallots begin to brown around the edges, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, red pepper flakes, and thyme; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the tomatoes, 1½ teaspoons salt, pepper, and flour. Remove from the heat; set aside.

3. For the topping: Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in the food processor. Add the butter and pulse until it is cut into pea-sized pieces. Add the cheese; pulse to combine. Pour in the buttermilk; pulse just until the dough is evenly moistened but still looks crumbly.

4. Transfer the dough to a large bowl and pat into a ball. Knead the dough a few times. Use a large spoon to arrange mounds of dough about ¼-cup in size over the tomatoes. Brush the biscuits with buttermilk and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon grated cheese.

5. Transfer the dish to the oven and bake until the biscuits are browned on top and the filling is bubbling, 35-45 minutes. Let rest 15 minutes before serving.