Whole Grain Peach Crisp

Call it a crisp, call it a crumble, nothing makes my house smell more inviting in late summer than a delicious baked fruit dessert.  Peach crisp is one of my all-time favorite treats, and I love making it in August and September.

Peach crisp came into my childhood as a recipe off the side of a Bisquick box.  Later as an adult living in Italy, I no longer had the recipe- which was not a problem, since I couldn't buy Bisquick at my local supermercato! 

I trolled recipe websites for crisp and crumble recipes claiming any association with Betty Crocker, my go-to American dessert reference.  I found a recipe to start with, then made a lot of changes.  For healthier baking I use whole grains and alternative fats and sweeteners.  But the most radical change of all...I've taken out the peaches!

Yep, my favorite peach crisp doesn't have peaches.  After one experiment subbing nectarines for peaches, I've never made peach crisp with peaches again.

I love the hint of acid that yellow nectarines bring to the crisp.  Choose nectarines that are a touch harder than you would normally eat them, but still plenty juicy.  

So long as they're not overly ripe, nectarines are fast and easy to peel with a potato peeler.  

The recipe calls for six cups of sliced fruit, that's usually equivalent to about 6 large nectarines.  

A crisp, or crumble as it's sometimes called, is essentially like a French apple pie.  Fruit slices are coated with a mixture of flour, sugar, and spices, then topped with a butter and sugar streusel blend.  The pie crust is eliminated, and I don't miss it in the least!  To improve the nutrition served up with this yummy treat, I add oats and walnuts to the crumble topping.

This is a very homey dessert, and it adapts beautifully to alternative baking ingredients.  There are no rising agents to worry about, so feel free to sub flour types for your health needs.  For instance, replacing the wheat flour with oat flour would work well if you need to eat gluten-free.  If you need to cut down on the sugar, leave off the crumble topping, stir the walnuts directly into the filling, and bake the filling alone, with slightly reduced cooking time.  You'll miss some of the indulgence, but none of the amazing baking aroma.

And it really is worth the effort to make this dessert just for the awesome smell of it baking in the oven.  Another perk- when a few weeks go by, welcome autumn and apple season by replacing the nectarines with tart apples.  You'll fall in love with baked fruit all over again.

For the filling:

6 C firm nectarines peeled and sliced

2 T whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 C Turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw)

3/4 t cinnamon

3/4 t nutmeg

For the crumble topping:

1/3 C Earth Balance butter substitute

2/3 C (shy) brown sugar

1 t cinnamon

1/4 t salt

1/2 C rolled oats

1/4 C whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 C chopped walnuts

Peel, remove the pits, and slice the nectarines.  Arrange slices in a single layer in an 8x8 square oven safe dish.  No need to grease the pan.

Dust the slices with the remaining filling ingredients and stir gently to coat the fruit slices with the dry ingredients.

Combine the dry ingredients for the crumble topping (except for the walnuts) into a small bowl.  Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a fork.  Stir the walnuts into the topping.

Spread the crumble topping over the prepared fruit.  Bake uncovered at 350 for about 55 minutes.  Peaches should be bubbly, topping golden brown.

Serve warm with ice cream on top for maximum indulgence and joy.  Pictured above with a vanilla flavored frozen almond milk dessert.

Recipes in Translation: Summertime Vegetable Ragù

It's the first day of summer, and I can't think of a better time to share this summertime recipe for Vegetable Ragù sauce for pasta.

I'm translating the recipe for Ragù di verdure from an Italian website called "Butta la pasta."  I was excited to find it because it's nearly identical to a recipe I made often when we lived in Italy, and it's a wonderful way to celebrate the amazing produce that's in season right now.

My English version of this recipe is not a word for word translation.  I'm using my years of experience in both American and Italian kitchens to create an interpretation of this authentic Italian recipe written with directions that should seem comfortable and familiar to an American home cook. 

The recipe as written in Italian calls for a kilogram of mixed, diced vegetables, such as red onion, zucchini, eggplant, and bell pepper, plus half a kilo of tomatoes.  I used two peppers, two zucchini, a medium red onion, and a small eggplant.  Half a kilo of tomatoes is about four Roma tomatoes.

If you want to invent your own vegetable blend, the volume measure is 8 cups of diced vegetables (not including the tomatoes)

Tomatoes when peeled, de-seeded, and diced, should be about three cups.  

To peel tomatoes, drop them into boiling water for 30-45 seconds.  If you're lucky you can slide the skins off with your fingers.  You may still need to use a vegetable peeler to remove some of the peel, but this job is much easier after the tomatoes have been dunked in boiling water. 

Scoop out all the seeds with a spoon.  Then dice.

Sauté the vegetables (except tomatoes) in 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil for 7-9 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, salt, and cayenne pepper, and sauté another 7-9 minutes.

When the tomatoes begin to melt into the sauce, add fresh basil.  Stir basil into the sauce and immediately turn off the heat.

Now you have a beautiful vegetable ragù, perfect for a warm or cold pasta dish.

This is enough vegetable ragù for a one pound box of pasta.  Here are my detailed instructions on how to cook pasta (including whole wheat pasta, as pictured here).

Summertime Vegetable Ragù

Servings: makes enough to dress a 1 pound box of pasta, serves 8

1 red onion, diced

2 bell peppers, diced (mix colors to make it pretty)

2 zucchini, diced

1 small eggplant, diced

4 Roma tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded, and diced

4 T extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 t fine sea salt

1/2 t cayenne

1/2 fresh basil, chopped

Heat the olive oil on medium high heat in a large sauté pan.  Add onions, peppers, zucchini, and eggplant.  Sauté uncovered for 7-9 minutes, until vegetables begin to soften.  Add the tomatoes, salt, and cayenne, sauté another 7-9 minutes, until tomatoes just begin to melt.  Add the fresh basil, stir quickly, then remove from heat.

Add to 1 pound of cooked pasta.  

If making a cold pasta salad, be sure cool the ragù and to rinse the boiled pasta under cool water before combining.

Buon appetito!

Zojirushi Bread Maker Strawberry Jam

I'd known for some time that my Zojirushi bread maker did a wonderful job spoiling me with fresh, home made, whole wheat loaves of bread, baked overnight and ready to enjoy in the morning.  But it wasn't until I sat down with the appliance manual that I realized I could also be making delicious jam.

And since I'd just come home from the farmer's market with beautiful strawberries...

I modified the strawberry jam recipe from the Zojirushi manual, which called for three cups of strawberries.  My interpretation is that the volume measure should be for the strawberries after they've been mashed, not before.  So I cut the strawberries into pieces and broke them down using a potato masher, continuing until my mash measured three cups.

The ingredients for jam are so simple- strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, and half a packet of fruit pectin, which I weigh precisely at 27 grams.  

I used to be hesitant about fruit pectin, confusing it with gelatin, but pectin comes entirely from plants (typically citrus if Wikipedia is accurate).  I use Sure-Jell pectin for "less or no sugar recipes."  It's easy to work with and always comes out great.

Add the strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, and fruit pectin to the bread maker, and the machine does the rest, gently stirring and heating so that I can get busy with other kitchen projects.  I pour from the pan directly into glass jars while still hot.  If you like, this is a good time to taste and add a little extra sugar if needed.  Sometimes I make a jar or two extra sweet for those in my life who have more of a sweet-tooth than me.

So simple, and at the end, yummy strawberry jam.  It's a great way to preserve an abundance of fruit.  The jam lasts up to 6 weeks in the refrigerator, and up to 1 year in the freezer- although home made jam has never gone uneaten at our house for so long.

My version of Zojirushi Strawberry Jam

3 cups mashed strawberries

1 T lemon juice

1/2 C turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw)

27 grams (1/2 packet) Sure-Jell fruit pectin made for low or no sugar recipes

Add ingredients to the bread pan in the order listed.  Set the bread machine to the jam cycle.  When the cycle is finished carefully remove the pan from the machine (it will be super hot!).  

Taste for sugar, if you want more, stir sugar in to taste while the jam is still hot.

Pour the hot jam into glass containers.  Allow to cool.  Refrigerate for up to 6 weeks or freeze for up to 1 year.

Portable Post Run Recovery Snack

Wanted: a healthy snack that can survive an eight mile run while bouncing up and down under the hot sun in a very unrefrigerated pocket.

Having a small snack after a serious run is supposed to do all sorts of helpful things to aid in muscle recovery so that we can feel well and get back out on the trail again sooner.  Problem is, we walk almost a mile to and from the trail.  By the time I get home to prepare a fresh snack, we've missed the half hour window where that post run recovery snack can make the most difference.

We had to find a portable snack that we could eat on our walk home.  It couldn't be too messy, it had to be nutritious.  The obvious choice was to buy a nutrition bar, but we wanted fresh, home made food, not something loaded with preservatives that came out of a box.

So today we auditioned Soft & Chewy Sugar-Free Granola Bars from OhSheGlows.com.

Thanks to the Vitamix this recipe was very easy to put together.  I used the dry container to grind the oat flour and the wet container handily made the paste of dates and water.  The bars turned out great- not too sweet, palatable, and gentle on the stomach.  We put both bars in a little Ziploc in my husband's pocket (yes, Ziploc snack bags are BPA free- I checked!)

The only snafu in our experiment was that the two thin bars I packed came out of our 8 mile run completely fused into one big bar.  Kind of romantic, in a sugar-free, nutrition bar kind of way.  We just broke the two-become-one bar in half and enjoyed!