I’m squeezing in under the wire for Taste & Create this month, which is a pity because Piccante Dolce has many delicious-looking recipes I want to try, and that’s what T&C is all about. Jen had cooked a peach and cardamom pie recently, and that fitted well with the nectarines I had, so I decided to go with that.
The pastry is quite unusual, with a very high fat content, but it came out light and crispy, and is easy to work with as long as you keep it cold. I made it with all butter since I don’t keep shortening around, and reduced the fat content since I couldn’t countenance almost equal weights of fat and flour!
I confess I didn’t bother to peel the nectarines, but their skin is a bit less obtrusive than peach skin. The cardamom flavour is a great idea and works well with the nectarines, although I found it a bit overpowering — I’d reduce to half a teaspoon next time. Overall this is an excellent, easy dessert.
Unfortunately there’s no photo — I left the camera at work! Below is my metric version of the recipe
Pastry
200 g unsalted butter – cold
2 tbs vanilla sugar
275 g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs cold water
1 tbs white vinegar
1 large egg
Filling
8-9 peaches or nectarines, peeled, pitted and cut into wedges
1 tbs lemon juice
50 g brown sugar
seeds scraped from 1 split vanilla bean
1 tsp cardamom (I would reduce to 1/2)
30 g flour
pinch salt
1 egg yolk
1 tbs cream or milk
Pulse the butter and vanilla sugar n a food processor to combine. Add flour and salt and pulse until combined and crumb-like. Mix together egg, vinegar and water. Add to flour mixture and pulse just until it forms a ball. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 200C. Peel and cut up peaches and toss with lemon juice in a bowl. In a separate bowl blendall dry ingredients, including seeds from vanilla bean. Stir into peaches and set aside.
Put your pie plate in the fridge and take dough out. Divide into two balls, one slightly larger that the other, and return the smaller ball to the fridge. Roll out the larger ball to a large thin circle. Take pie plate from fridge, line with pastry, and return to the fridge
Remove second ball of dough from the refrigerator and roll out to just large enough to fit over the top of pie. Remove pie plate from fridge and put the peach mixture in it, mounding slightly in the middle. Cover with crust. Cut vents in the top of the crust. Mix together egg yolk and cream or milk Using a pastry brush, brush egg wash all over the crust.
Place pie on a baking sheet and cook in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Lower heat to 150C and cook for another 20 minutes until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Remove from oven and allow to cool before serving.
I love that you tried this pie and used nectarines! The cardamom is quite strong and I will likely try cutting down on it next time I make the pie.
Loved the lemon olive oil mousse!
Sounds lovely. I know, Cardamom is sooooooooo fricker fracker strong! I hardly ever use it in things because it always overpowers.
The pastry sounds lovely and short, but wasn’t it tricky to handle with such a high fat content? I suppose you could always prepare it the ‘Jamie’ way, where he rolls the pastry into a sausage shape, wraps and chills it, then slices off rounds to line the tin, pushing the rounds together. Lovely flavourings, though, I would never have thought of outting cardamom in and must try this!
I do poach apricots in a syrup flavoured with cardamom and cinnamon, and springle them with pistachios before serving. Very nice. A little rosewater in the syrup helps crank up the exotic tastes too.
Hi Maggie
It was easy to handle as long as it was chilled (the original recipe specified putting it in the freezer, but my freezer is too far away from the kitchen — I did refrigerate it overnight though).
Now you mention it, I think apricots would have worked a lot better, as they have a stronger flavour. The nectarines were completely swamped by the cardamom, and your apricot recipe sounds lovely.