Broiled Stone Fruit with Sweet Cream Recipe
A great way to use up stone fruits. Simple, fast, and decadent using just five ingredients - cream, egg yolks, maple sugar, seasonal stone fruit, and a splash of liquer.
This is a recipe I am going to teach at one of my classes later this summer (recipe included below)
Things that have happened to me in the past seven days:
- I spent the day shooting at Sushi Ran, a place that serves up what many consider the best sushi in the Bay Area. The setting is beautiful, just two blocks off the water in Sausalito, and the interior is a photographer's dream - browns, wood, slate, flowers, and handmade touches with floor to ceiling windows that bath the entire restaurant in natural light. I got there first thing in the morning and spent all day shooting the restaurant in action, the kitchen during the lunch rush, the wonderful creations coming out of the kitchen and sushi bar. I will try to get Yoshi or one of the chefs to dictate a recipe to me (I have a couple in mind), and will post a few of my favorite shots from the day at some point.
- Had lunch at Cafe Gratitude. I love this place, their food is raw/alive, flavorful, beautifully prepared, satisfying, delicious, and affordable (I also happened to have dinner at Juliano's Raw in Los Angeles this weekend and although good, spent twice as much). The spicy coconut curry soup at Cafe Gratitude, also known as "I am Thankful" is delicious, and the Coconut Creme Pie "I am Devoted" is outrageous. Inspired, I made a raw peaches and cream tart last night from Renee Loux Underkoffler's Living Cuisine cookbook, and will write about that as well if you will stop rolling your eyes. Such a great book, filled with tons of creative ways to think about familiar ingredients.
- Got distracted by the beautiful array of hazelnut spreads, olive-oils, and organic jams and jellies lining the walls at Le Pain Quotidien in Santa Monica - walked out, got in the car and drove all the way home from Los Angeles before I realized I left my favorite camera and all my lenses under the chair where I'd enjoyed a hot coffee and basket of assorted fruit, nut, and grain breads eight hours prior. At which point my eyes got huge and a flood of tears immediately started running down my cheeks - I would much rather have my car stolen than lose my favorite camera. Luckily, I must have a flock of angels looking out for me - the staff at Le Pain Quotidien took good care of my camera until my good friend Lanha was able to run over there and overnight it back to me. It is now home safe and sound.
Smiling in front of a mural on Abbot Kinney Blvd. before I lost my camera.
- I also bunkered down and typed up some of the recipes I'm going to be teaching/demonstrating later this summer in various classes around the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego. This one, with the broiled stone fruits, is one of my favorites. You can really use just about any juicy fruit you like as the base, summer is good for stone fruits and berries in particular...I don't typically love cooked strawberries (how can anything be more perfect than a sweet, ripe, juicy, red strawberry?)...so this is one fruit I don't really use for this recipe. If you are interested in cooking up a summer menu with me in person - the first class is July 30th, a lazy Saturday, in San Mateo (Bay Area). The class is demonstration format (vs. hands-on), and there are a limited number of spots. Why I chose a broiler recipe on what will inevitably be the hottest day of the summer, I'm not quite sure...but I promise you will love this dessert as much as I do, and a little sweat never hurt anyone.
A little about the recipe: I've been playing around with different types of sugars and sweeteners lately and use maple sugar in this recipe. Maple sugar has a lot going for it over the sugars we are most comfortable and familiar using. Most sugars are refined chemically from sugarcane, corn, or sugar beets. Many people think "brown" sugar is the healthy alternative to white - not the case. Simply put, brown sugar is just white sugar with molasses or caramel coloring added. Maple syrup in contrast is natural, unrefined, has its minerals and vitamins intact, and although it doesn't have the "neutral" flavor that is associated with granulated white sugar, it has a subtle enough flavor that it is very versatile and useful for sweetening just about everything. Perfect for sweetening a recipe like this, it is more subtle (to my tastebuds) than some of the other alternative granulated sweeteners like Rapadura (unrefined, evaporated cane juice). It is also lighter in color.
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Broiled Stone Fruit with Sweet Cream
3 to 4 cups of seasonal stone fruit - I like to use cherries early in the summer, and move onto peaches, nectarines, plums, and berries as the season progresses. You can use a single type of fruit or play around with different combinations Try punctuating peaches with a sprinkling of raspberries and a splash of creme de framboise. You will need to pit your fruit, and peel it in the case of fuzzy peaches or apricots. Cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces.
1 cup organic heavy whipping cream, well chilled
2 egg yolks
3 T. maple sugar
A splash of fruit liqueur (for example: if I am using peachs, I add peach brandy)Preheat the oven to 400˚F.
You will need the maple sugar finely granulated so it can be easily assimilated into the cream. Take a pinch of the maple sugar between two fingers - if yours is particularly chunky or grainy, give it a quick whirl in your food processor to powder it a bit.
In a large bowl whip the chilled cream and sugar until soft peaks form. Add the egg yolks and fruit liqueur and whip for about 30 seconds more.
Place six individual-sized ovenproof ramekins (or tiny baking dishes) on a baking sheet and fill each dish 3/4 full with fruit.
Divide the cream mixture between each dish, covering the fruit in each dish. Place in the oven (middle rack) and bake for 3 minutes. You then want to brown the tops of the desserts - either turn on your broiler and broil until evenly browned, or in a pinch use a handheld culinary blowtorch.
Warn people they are hot, but serve immediately.
Makes 6 individual servings, or a dozen or so mini servings.
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Hi Diane, in some cases brown sugar is refined sugar that has had varying amounts of molasses added back in - of course effecting flavor. Miriam Morgan wrote an in-depth article on processed sugar variables a few years back - def. worth reading. Click here to read the article.
Love your site. Its beautiful. I have a question. If brown sugar is just white sugar with coloring, why does it make my pumpkin pie taste differently than when I use white sugar? I'l keep watching your site.
Really enjoy checking in on your site to see, what's cooking! The recipes and visual appeal of your site is hard to beat, a very classic layout which adds so much to the recipes being featured. I myself am a vegetarian cooking instructor and author and am well aware of how much work goes into excellent photography and recipe crafting. Keep up the great work Heidi!
Hi Heidi, I'm just writing to say that you've done a fabulous job with this site and I feel extremely lucky to have discovered it. Now I feel compelled to check in regularly and see what culinary capers you're up to. I envy you for living in the Bay area. I was there last year for a holiday and fell in love with the place. I have travelled around, but have yet to see any place as magical as San Francisco. I didn't have a lot of time to explore any food shops, but from what I've heard , it is a food-lover's paradise. Thanks again for inspiring someone miles away in Europe with your wonderful blog. Good luck in everything you do! FTS
I only use Wholesome Sweeteners' or Florida Crystals' Natural Cane Sugar ... it's an ash blonde color b/c it is minimally refined and is not bleached. It has a wonderful taste, too--unlike bleached sugar which tastes like nothing but cloying sweetness--that is shown to great advantage in brittle. I also use light and dark muscovados instead of light or dark brown, for the reason you explained above. The extra expense is well worth the health and taste benefits, I believe.
i too loved roxannes and was quite sad when it closed although with the prices and the fact that it's across the water i only ate there a couple of times....... There is apparently a new raw foods restaurant opening on post and taylor - Parawdise (www.rawinten.com) - don't know anything about it or when is set to open but perhaps worth checking out...
Oh! Not to ignore all the other interesting bits you posted, but I am so glad you got your camera and equipment back safe and sound! My toes went cold when I read you'd left your bag under your seat. Whew, you were lucky. Derrick did a similar thing on a trip, and that camera was long gone within the 5-10 minutes it took for him to realize it was missing.
Heidi - I actually had it as part of I am Abundant like you. Mine didn't have any mushrooms either despite their mention on the menu. I think they had just remade a batch because initially they said they'd run out. Maybe they whipped up another batch too hastily. I don't actually like the Abundant plate. After a while it is too rich for me, which is a problem I find with a lot of raw food when it uses heavy grains, oil and nuts, avocado, garlic and coconut to make stuff tasty. I like it initially, but can't take too much of it, that's all. I do find the raw movement interesting, but couldn't do it too often. Plus - because the preperation is time consuming - it seems like raw food can be a bit on the pricey side. By the time I visited Roxanne's the tasting menu was $100 pp as I recall. Myabe I am remembering wrong. I used to be a vegan - so I am kind of into the idea of making something fabulous from vegetables alone. Have you checked in on Culiblog? http://www.culiblog.org/ She has been doing some amazing experiments with food and art, sometimes vegan. Stunning stuff.
Hi Sam :) Did you order a whole bowl of the soup? I didn't even think of it until you mentioned it - the last two times I've been to CG I got the soup as part of the big sampler platter, "I am Abundant"... I just assume they have one curried coconut soup, and you can get it as part of the sample platter or on its own - but it is possible we had different soups? Both times I got a tiny cup filled with a sweet curry -kissed coconut milk broth. It had a bit of kick and had a generous helping of various vegetables swimming about, including really nice mushrooms. It was the perfect amount to balance out a plate of nut pates, crackers, live nachos and the like... I loved Roxanne's too - I had a great meal at Roxanne's before it closed, and wrote about it here: https://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000099.html As far as the raw thing goes. I realize a lot of people don't get it...some of my friends audibly groan when I suggest going to raw restaurants, but I find it exciting, and I'm very curious about the culinary techniques being explored and developed in raw kitchens. It is a too restrictive for me to embrace as an everyday diet (and incorporates an awful lot of nuts, avocado, and coconut), but I certainly look forward to many raw meals in my future. The people who go in and insist on comparing a Cafe Gratitude pizza to say, Zachary's are going to have a hard time. I like to eat a lot of fresh raw vegetables in general - I like how they taste, the brightness of their flavor, and how I feel afterwards - but I do shift the way I think about a meal when I go into a living foods establishment. I don't go in looking for my coconut cream pie to be the pie I remember from when I was a kid, and last week when I had meatballs at Juliano's the didn't have the taste or texture of any meatball I can remember, but they were SO tasty....
Hi, Wife does the same thing with a 2qt. bowl, one of everything! Great stuff...
I really really wanted to love the spicy coconut curry soup at Gratitude, it sounded delicious, but when I had it, it tasted like they had used a brash Indian madras curry powder. In my experience curry powders need to be cooked in order to release their true flavours. In my mind's eye I had expected a thai style curry which I think would have suited it much better. I tried to ask the waitress some questions about this decision but she realy didn't have a clue what i was talking about so I gave up. Did you ever eat at Roxanne's? That was an amazing experience but talk about pricey. My mother and I paid $100 each before a glass of wine! My mum is quite into raw food and I am interested in it too. Would love to see some of your raw recipes one day. So glad you got your camera back. Lucky girl! The sushi ran experience sounds good too - ooh - you have so much to share with us in the coming weeks. -Sam
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