The Breakfast Challenge – Roasted Peach Butter on Sourdough

by Linda on December 15, 2011

I love stone fruit season.  We’re too far north for the best of it  - I’ve learned that it is futile trying to get decent apricots or cherries this far north. But we get good local peaches and plums from within my “100 mile diet” range, with most of the 100 miles vertical, up onto the Northern Tablelands where there is enough chill factor and less fruit flies.

We do have several very early plum varieties that we can pick early enough to beat the fruit flies.  And we have several seedling peach trees that bear beautifully fragrant peaches with a thickish skin, that protects about half of them from fruit fly.  Trouble is, you don’t know which half until you bite into them.

I’ve tried baiting and bagging and netting with some success, but it’s a lot of work. I remember reading a report years ago where someone was bagging out organic gardening by calculating that a tomato cost something like $10 in resources and labour, and I thought, well you’re just growing the wrong type at the wrong time.  My basic garden philosophy is that if you want a garden that yields quality as well as quantity with a viable amount of time spent overall,  you have to go with your climate and environment. For me, that means virtually effortless mangoes, but peaches that are half for me, half for the chooks.

But, the end result of all that is that, this time of year, I have lots of really nice peaches that need to be cut, and I don’t want to make jam because then I’d just eat it and I really don’t need that much sugar. This is our favourite way to use them.

The Recipe:

Cut the peaches in half and stone them.

Put them, skin side down, on an oven tray. If you have a real sweet tooth you can sprinkle with sugar, but I don’t.

Bake in a very low oven for an hour or two until they are semi-dried, like semi-dried tomatoes.  I put them on the bottom shelf of my (not fan forced) oven while it warms up for bread baking, take them out for half an hour while the oven is hot, then put them back in with the oven turned down very low while it cools down.

Blend the semi-dried peaches in a blender or food processor, adding a (very) little butter, oil, or just or water if needed to get a smooth spread.

It will keep for a few days in the fridge, and I imagine would freeze well, but we eat it fresh, spread thickly on toast.

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The Breakfast Challenge – Apple and Peach Breakfast Compote

by Linda on February 10, 2011

This is my current favourite breakfast, and the next in the Breakfast Cereal Challenge. The first of the new season apples have just arrived at our local Farmers Market, coming down from the Tablelands (within our 160 km range as the crow flies), and there are still some late season peaches too, so just for a few weeks the seasons overlap.

Living with stand-alone solar power, you become very aware of what an energy guzzler refrigeration is.  Our little, 60 litre, 12 volt electric fridge is the biggest electricity consuming thing in our household, by a long way.  So I hate to think how much power is consumed, and how much greenhouse gas is created, cold storing apples.

One of the benefits of refusing to buy cold-stored apples is that you stop taking humble apples for granted and really appreciate these  first of the season ones.

Apple season is all over by the end of May in my part of the world.  If you live further south, it probably won’t start till next month and though the season is longer, it won’t last into spring.  Apples cold store reasonably well, but who would choose a cold-stored apple when there are fresh, just picked strawberries instead? And conversely, who would choose strawberries imported from USA and treated with methyl bromide, when you can buy fresh, crisp, sweet new season apples?

The Recipe:

Like all the Breakfast Cereal Challenge recipes, this one is simple, fast and healthy enough for a work and school day mornings.

This quantity is the amount I make for me.  You can double it, but don’t try to do too much at once or the fruit will stew.

Chop an apple and a peach into bite sized pieces.

Heat a little macadamia oil or butter in a heavy pan and saute the chopped fruit, along with a handful of  pepitas, a handful of sunflower seeds, and a handful of raw rolled oats.  Sprinkle over a teaspoon of cinnamon. Cook for just a few minutes, stirring gently occasionally, till the fruit starts to caramelise and the seeds toast.

Serve warm with a good dollop of plain, low fat yoghurt.

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Peach Scrolls

by Linda on November 29, 2010

The year speeds up so much at this stage.  It’s hard to believe there are only two more  Muesli Bar Challenges before the end of term, and the end of a whole year of weekly recipes.  The Challenge is year’s worth of lunch box baking that is based on fresh food in season, healthy, robust enough to survive in a school bag till lunch time, easy enough for busy parents to bother making, and that kids actually prefer to the junk food marketed as “muesli bars”.

This week’s recipe is slower than most.  I’ve been wanting to feature a yeasted bun recipe for a while, and with peaches now in season, it seemed like a good time.  This one doesn’t take a lot of work, but like all yeasty recipes, it needs time for the yeast to work.  A great slow Sunday recipe – if there is such a thing right now!

The Recipe

The Bread Dough

  • Melt 2 good dessertspoons of butter in ¼ cup of milk.
  • Dissolve in 1 dessertspoon of brown sugar.
  • Add another ¼ cup of milk, which will cool it down to “warm bath” warm.
  • Beat in an egg
  • Dissolve in a teaspoon of dried yeast.

Cover with a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place for the yeast to come to life.  It should develop a bit of  froth on the surface, showing the yeast is alive.

Mix in just under 2 cups of wholemeal plain flour to give a smooth soft dough.  Flour your work surface and knead the dough until it is smooth and springy.  Like all bread kneading, the more the merrier, but about 5 minutes is a good guide.

Melt a little butter on your hands and rub over the surface of the ball of dough.  Put it back in the bowl, cover again, and leave it in a warm spot to rise until it doubles in bulk. In this summer weather, a warm sunny window sill is usually warm enough to get it to this within an hour or so but it won’t hurt to leave it longer.

Assembling

Now comes the easy bit.

  • Roll the dough out to a rectangle about 35cm by 20 cm and 1 cm or so thick.
  • Spread a dessertspoon of soft butter on the dough, then sprinkle with a teaspoon of cinnamon, then dribble over 3 or 4 teaspoons of honey.
  • Sprinkle evenly with 3 peaches chopped fine.
  • Roll the dough up.  The log of dough should be 35 cm long (ie, roll along the long axis).
  • Beat an egg and brush the join with egg so that it sticks together.  Then, using a bread knife, cut the log into 3 cm thick swirls.
  • Place the swirls on a greased baking tray.  Brush the tops very generously with egg, using up all the remaining egg.
  • Leave the swirls like that in a warm spot for a while.  An hour is a good length of time but you can get away with less.  I scrimped time with these ones and I think they would have been better – softer and more “pillowy” –  if I’d left them another half an hour.
  • Bake in a moderate to hot oven for around 30 minutes until they are brown on top and the dough is cooked.  Try not to overdo them or they will be dry.

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Lunchbox Peach Sbrisoletta

November 22, 2010

Early season peaches are just coming into season here.  I don’t really grow stonefruit – we are smack bang in fruit fly territory and it’s just too much work.  I have a couple of volunteer seedling peach trees though, and although most years the birds, possums, and flying foxes get most of the fruit,  the [...]

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