They say old habits die hard, but for me, it’s the new ones that dig in and don’t let go.
Stone fruit. I can’t stop baking it.
I bake apricots because it makes sense. It’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s how you get them to sing. Peaches, though, are a different story, one that typically begins once upon a time in a paper sack on my counter, and ends – happily, drippily – over the sink, where I eat them out of hand. Last year, intent on baking my favorite pie (which, coincidentally, is also Tim’s favorite pie!), I bought peaches by the half-dozen, week after week. I’d leave them to ripen, stock up on butter. But the aroma of a perfectly ripe peach is like a search and destroy signal to my brain, and inevitably there I’d be, over by the sink again. I didn’t bake a pie until September. September! It was the season’s last gasp, and it made one hell of a finale. This year, I’m determined not to wait that long.
Determined, I tell you, despite a new roadblock that’s plopped itself down in my path. This: Nigel Slater’s baked peaches with an almond crust.
When I sat down today to tell you about these peaches, I hesitated. They’re from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard, and I’ve already written about so many recipes from it here. Only I haven’t. That’s what I realized when I clicked back through my last few entries and discovered that, while Nigel Slater has inspired me left and right and all around town with this beautiful, beautiful volume, I’ve yet to share a single recipe directly from its pages. There’s been a rhubarb polenta crumble based, in part, on one of Nigel Slater’s cakes, and a pinch of cardamom in with these thanks to a hint on page 105, but that’s all. This is the sign of a truly great cookbook, I think, when it gets you reading, and thinking, and cooking differently before you take a single recipe for a spin. Of course, when you do finally move on a proper recipe, if it turns out anything like these peaches, you’ve got a reliable sign of greatness there, too.
The transformation of peaches in the oven is not as dramatic as it is with apricots, but it’s there. Their flesh goes from sweet and slippery to sweeter and slipperier; they get peachier, somehow, if you know what I mean. These particular baked peaches also get a crust made of butter and sugar and almond crumbs – that’s all, though you would never believe it. I hardly believe it, and I’m the one who made them. (Twice.) The butter tastes like butter and the almonds taste like almonds. No surprises, there. But there’s also a faint booziness to these suckers that comes from I don’t know where, as if a shot of amaretto sneaked into the baking dish when you weren’t looking. It fits, actually, since amaretto is a grown-up thing to taste in a dessert – or to think you taste, whatever the case may be – and I imagine these peaches are what crumble looks like when it’s all grown up: peach crumble in neat little packages, each halved piece of fruit capped with its own personal crust. It’s a peach crumble all-in-one, like what deviled eggs are to egg salad.
“I can see every reason for cream here,” Nigel Slater says, and I agree. I whipped mine, loosely, with vanilla sugar. I see every reason for that, too.
Baked Peaches with an Almond Crust
Adapted from Nigel Slater’s Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard
This recipe calls for golden baker’s sugar, which can be expensive and hard to find in the United States. Nigel Slater recommends raw sugar (demerara or turbinado) whirred in a food processor as a substitute. I didn’t have any of that on hand, either, so I used plain old white sugar with very nice results.
4 ripe peaches (or nectarines)
1/3 cup (50 grams) almonds
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar (see note, above)
3 tablespoons (45 grams) unsalted butter, cubed
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Gently wash and dry the peaches, cut them in half, and remove the pits. Place the fruit cut side up in a baking dish.
Put the almonds and the sugar in a food processor and pulse until the nuts are coarsely ground. You want them still pebbly enough to crunch. Add the butter, and pulse until just blended.
Spoon the almond mixture on top of the peaches and bake for 45-50 minutes, until the top is brown and crisp, and you could slice through the fruit with a spoon.
Serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled with loosely whipped, lightly sweetened cream.