Day 8 - Peach crumble

For those of you on the cold side of the world, we are currently in that glorious glut called stone fruit. This year the white nectarines have been to.die.for.

Anway, back at Australia Day I bought a tray of large freestone yellow peaches, thinking I would do a fragrant platter of them for the table. Naturally I forgot about them in Mum's fridge and that is where they've been for almost two weeks.

So tonight, on inspiration from today's Good Living, I made a peach crumble.

The filling is Stephanie Alexander's, the crumble topping one from my own recipe book, which I think is a Bill Granger special.

The peach compote (how fancy! a compote. ie, stewed peaches)
8 ripe freestone peaches (or nectarines apparently)
30g butter
1/3 cup caster sugar
2 tblsp water

Score the peaches around the natural seam of the fruit, and place in boiling water for a minute or two until the skin comes away easily. (you don't need to skin nectarines if using them)
Slice peaches into thick wedges
Combine peaches, butter, sugar and water in a saucepan.
Cook for about 10 minutes, stir once or twice.

Preheat oven to 200C

The crumble
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tblsp rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
Combine all the dry then rub in the butter until it clumps.
Grease a 1 litre baking dish Pour in peaches (I had some left over that the boys will get on their brekkie tomorrow morning)
Strew topping over the fruit (they are SA's words. Strew.)
Bake 20-25mins until topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling.

Serves 4.

The compote is absolutely divine. Not too sweet, just enough to heighten the peaches. Very very lovely.
The dinner preceeding it was snags, steak and mushrooms on the barbie, mash (after all that talk about potatoes and mash, and an unseasonally cool day, mash was on my mind) and blanched sugar snap peas.

The steak was thick cut scotch fillet and just sensational. I'm not sure if its the breastfeeding thing or what but it is highly unusual for me to ever even feel like steak, let alone crave it and eat a whole piece. It was magic.