All By Myself
As most of you know by now, I have been taking some family recipes, making sense out of them, cooking, baking and blogging the results. My grandmother, the keeper of the recipes, is away in the Poconos for the summer. She called me recently to request her recipes back so she could make “that peach shit.” She explained that she could wait on the other recipes but the peach shit is seasonal. Also, ML’s post asking what do with summer fruit reminded me of my grandmother’s solution to the fruit problem. She’s not the biggest fan unless sugar and butter are involved. All this inspired me to make the peach shit as well. Even more noteworthy, I decided to try my hand at making something by myself without my grandmother or mother there to boss and ridicule help me.
The name of the dish comes from my grandfather who was jonesing for it on a lazy summer day. He asked my grandmother, “So when are you going to make it?” “Make what?” “You know, that peach shit.” I think he thought asking for a peach crumble sounded a little lame. That or he just had no idea what it was called. Either way the name stuck. Peach shit is indeed a peach crumble which is possibly the easiest thing in the world to bake. That said, I, working alone, could almost turn it into a Friday fuck-up. The only thing that redeemed it is that it’s really hard to make peaches, sugar, and butter turn out badly. So what follows is kind of a what to do and what not to do to make some perfectly respectable peach shit.
I got a bunch of peaches on the way back from the Blue Ridge Mountains a few weeks ago and waited for them to ripen up. When they are ready the skin will just want to come right off.
Ripen up little peaches. Then I'm going to skin and slice ya!
I know this is a popular recipe because there are several versions in the recipe folder. One version suggested blanching the peaches to make it easier to peel, which did help. So, if you want, boil the peaches you are going to use for 1 minute before you peel them. The recipe calls for 3 peaches, which did not seem like very many to me so I peeled 4 small ones, which more than filled my “pie pan.”
Peaches, you are about to be peach shit.
Speaking of the pie pan. This is obviously a cake pan and I was supposed to use a pyrex pie pan to make this. I couldn’t find mine and think I may have left it at my mom’s or something but would recommend really using a pie pan. The recipe also called for a crust but my grandmother noted “I always make it without the crust.” Since I didn’t have a pie crust just hanging around in my freezer like my mom does, I skipped it as well. It may help with the serving presentation though if you’re not planning to just scoop the shit over ice cream.
OK, now comes the “baking” part. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix 4 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar, 2 tbsp. flour, and 1/3 cup sour cream and pour over the peaches. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 25-35 minutes. I know this doesn’t seem very exact for baking purposes but I felt like mine was overcooked. And you’re going to put it back in anyway. I’ll get to that in a sec. But seriously guys – this is barely baking.
While the peaches are in the oven, make the crumble. Take 1/2 cup of butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 cup flour. Knife it together until the crumbles are the size and consistency you like. This is what my crumble looked like.
Take the foil off the peaches, put the crumble on and bake for 10 more minutes. Serve immediately. I unfortunately did not serve immediately. I put this puppy in the fridge and brought it to a BBQ the next day. Humidity is NOT the MVI in this dish. In fact, I don’t even really have a picture of the finished project because although it tasted delish, it was a *bit* of a soggy mess before I got it to its destination. That and the evil hostess of the BBQ made ice cold lemon nut bars, demonstrating a better knack for serving dishes at optimal temperatures and unloading some culinary whoop ass on my sorry looking dessert. Presentation is everything, folks. I forgot to get a pic before it turned into a crumbly mess at the BBQ. So my serving suggestion is serve hot over ice cream or with a side of whipped cream. Either way, it tasted good and, presentation aside, if I can’t screw it up, neither can you.
OOOH, this looks awesome. I see this in my near future.
Looks very good, but I think you should have named this post, “these are the teaches of peaches.”
is it peach season already? And speaking of, how the eff do I tell whether or not a peach is good? I find it impossible and they so often look beautiful and end up tasting meh. or bad.
nice a recipe i can use to get rid of the ridiculous bounty of peacehs delievered by my csa last week!
@Maids: you are absolutely right. I wanted to call it “all by myyyseeellllfff” to reference the song but thought people might just think my spelling was a show.
@BS: I actually think peaches are best when they are just this side of rotten. A little mushy, even. The paper bag trick works wonders if you have unripe peaches lying? laying? around. Maybe somoen else has another trick.
2 HUGE things for selecting ANY kind of fruit (or vegetable for that matter) It should ALWAYS be Heavy relative to it’s size… it’s a little hard to judge at first, you really have to kind of ‘juggle’ a few of the same size items first (Oh, and don’t worry about the other people in the market that WILL be looking at you funny! LOL) You’ll get a feel for it after a while 🙂 The weight basically tells you how much water content the fruit/veggie is holding… you don’t want fruit/veggies that are dry, dry=tasteless!
But then there’s Fragrane! If you can’t detect a sweetness of the fruit, by sniffing where it was detached from the vine/stem… it will NEVER become tasteful even w/the Brown bag trick! Same goes for veggies. It’s really very simple… if you believe you know what that item smells like, you should be able to detect at least a hint of it before you buy it!