Credit: Liz Haarala and Max Hamilton
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Cooking For People: 3 summer dessert recipes that will help you make the most of the season’s best fruit
7 months ago
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9 min read
Enjoy the last of the season’s produce with these three delicious dessert recipes from chef Mike Davies’s Cooking For People cookbook.
There’s a certain sadness that comes with the August bank holiday weekend. Sure, a three-day weekend (and two four-day weeks) is never a bad thing, but with the occasion also marking the official end of summer and the beginning of the autumn months, we can’t help but wish for a few more weeks of sunny days and balmy, bright nights.
And although this summer may have started out somewhat lacklustre on the weather front, the recent spate of warmer weather we’ve been able to enjoy has us only just settling into the season. We’ve shrugged off layers, gotten out the garden furniture and have finally been able to enjoy the best of seasonal produce. And we’re not ready to give it up just yet.
Credit: Pavilion
All about bringing people together through food, the newly released Cooking For People by chef Mike Davies (of The Camberwell Arms, Frank’s Café and Mike’s Peckham) is here to help us cling onto summer for a little while longer. Split into chapters that feature beautiful seasonal menus for home cooks, the book takes out the often-prohibitive stress that accompanies hosting – offering easy to follow recipes that anyone can cook (and enjoy).
And because we haven’t got much longer yet to enjoy summer’s produce, we’re sharing three recipes that make the most of the best seasonal fruit. From an update on strawberries and cream to peaches and salted caramel sauce and a perfect cherry pie, here’s hoping that an Indian summer is on the cards.
Strawberries and nectarines with clotted cream and amaretti biscuits
Mike says: “My mum makes this for me when strawberries and nectarines are at their peak. It’s my favourite dessert. I’ve always been a big fruit person, but this dish is the most refreshing and delicious raw fruit dessert I know, and I’m excited and happy that you’re going to make and eat it. I’ve added clotted cream and amaretti biscuits but my mum just serves the fruit. If you’re looking for a lighter pud, follow her lead, but I think my additions fancy it up a bit. I debated for some time whether to write an amaretti biscuit recipe for this book, but deep down I knew I couldn’t make them as nice as the shop-bought ones. So, in the spirit of cutting the right corners, I’ve suggested buying some.”
Ingredients
For the fruit:
- 1kg strawberries, hulled
- 75g golden caster sugar
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 4 nectarines, stones removed and cut into 8 pieces
To finish:
- 100g amaretti biscuits,
- crushed clotted cream, to serve
Method
Put 800g of the strawberries in a blender with the sugar and lemon juice, and blend until smooth.
Cut the remaining 200g of strawberries into quarters. Add the nectarines and cut strawberries to the strawberry soup. Leave to chill in the fridge.
Ladle out the fruit mixture into individual bowls and top with a spoonful of clotted cream and a generous flurry of broken biscuits. Eat immediately.
Roasted peaches with almond salted caramel sauce and Jersey cream
Mike says: “I realized what a peach could be during the first summer at The Camberwell Arms. I ordered peaches from Sicily, so large and aromatic that the smell would reach the kitchen before the delivery was wheeled in. Good fruit is best eaten as it is, perhaps with a little cheese, so it might feel counterintuitive to cook it, but the occasional roasting of peaches is not to be sniffed at. Jersey cream is available in some supermarkets, but Neal’s Yard Dairy in London sells the best I’ve come across – a cream so thick and glossy it’s somewhere between clotted and double. A special thing indeed.”
Ingredients
For the peaches:
- 4 peaches – 1 per person, the best peaches you can find, ideally giant yellow ones from Sicily or the south of France
- 80g dark brown sugar
- 60g butter
- 50ml dark rum
For the almond salted caramel sauce:
- 50g flaked almonds
- 100g caster sugar
- 50g salted butter, cold and cubed
- 100ml double cream
To finish:
- Jersey cream – lashings thereof
Method
Preheat your oven to 180°C fan/200°C/400°F/ gas mark 6 and line a roasting tin with baking paper. You can also use a pizza oven for this recipe. Cut the peaches in half and remove the stones. Sprinkle the sugar over each half and put a knob of butter in the wells created by removing the stones. Dress with a generous splash of rum and bake until just softened and starting to colour, around 15–20 minutes. Allow to cool completely. The peaches can be cooked and cooled a day or so before serving if you so wish, simply transfer to a container with a lid and refrigerate, making sure that all of the cooking juices comes with them – they’re kind of the best bit.
Preheat your oven to 160°C fan/180°C/350°F/ gas mark 4
Toast the almonds on a baking tray in the oven until they turn a light golden brown, then allow to cool while you make the caramel. Heat the sugar in a dry pan over a medium heat until it starts to caramelize – you are looking for a deep golden brown so that some of the sweetness of the sugar is tempered by a little bitterness. When you’re happy with the colour, whisk in the butter. Add the cream and continue to whisk over a medium heat until the sauce comes together. The caramel will likely seize and harden into a chunk to begin with, but as you continue to heat and whisk it, it will transform into a glossy, lustrous, slightly salty caramel sauce. Stir in the almonds and allow to cool. This sauce will keep for several days in the fridge
If you’re planning to serve the peaches warm, preheat your oven to 160°C fan/180°C/350°F/ gas mark 4 and bake them for 10 minutes or so. Otherwise just leave them at room temperature to take the edge off the fridge cold. Heat your caramel sauce until it starts to soften – it doesn’t need to be piping hot, just warm enough to loosen it. Plate the peaches with plenty of cream and some of their cooking juices, before spooning over plenty of caramel sauce. I think a glass of vin santo or even a cheeky little amaretto would be a treat with this dessert, followed by a nice big nap.
Cherry pie and frozen oat cream
Mike says: “Cherries are my favourite fruit. Apparently, when my mum was in her third trimester with me, cherries were it, so perhaps that explains my obsession. Perfect, full fruit, with the ideal ratio of sweetness and acidity, start to appear in the UK from July onwards, but I think they are best in August when they’ve had plenty of sun. The British don’t really go in for fruit pies like the Americans do, apart from an apple pie on occasion, which is a real shame because they are excellent. Furthermore, because this is a vegan recipe, I’m suggesting shop-bought shortcrust pastry, which makes it fairly straightforward. The frozen oat cream is a sort of oat and maple semifreddo – essentially a no-churn ice cream using the rather miraculous, whippable oat cream that is available in supermarkets now. Sweet like cherry pie indeed.”
Ingredients
For the pie:
- 800g fresh cherries, pitted (you can do this with a special pitter, or just break the cherries open by hand or with a knife and pull the stones out – do this over a bowl so you save any juice)
- 120g demerara sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
- 50ml brandy
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 60g cornflour
- 60g ground almonds
- 125g vegan butter, plus extra for greasing
- 2 pre-rolled sheets of vegan shortcrust pastry
For the frozen oat cream:
- 250ml whippable oat cream
- 150ml maple syrup
Method
Preheat your oven to 200°C fan/220°C/425°F/ gas mark 7. Mix the cherries with the sugar, brandy and lemon juice and allow to sit for an hour or so to macerate. Drain the juice off into a saucepan and add 2 tablespoons of the cherries. Cook the cherries over a medium heat and reduce the liquid until it starts to become glossy and a bit syrupy – around 2 minutes or so at a simmer. Add the cooked cherries and syrup back into the raw cherry mixture and fold in the cornflour and ground almonds. The cornflour and almonds will thicken the mixture – it might look a bit dry but that’s okay, it will loosen again when it cooks.
Grease a 25-cm (10-in) pie dish, or any deepsided medium ovenproof dish, with the vegan butter and line it with one of the sheets of pastry. Tumble in the cherry mixture and dot a few blobs of vegan butter over the top. Drape the second sheet of pastry over the top and crimp the edges. You can decorate the top however you like, but make sure there are a couple of small slits to allow the steam to escape as the pie bakes. Paint the top with some melted vegan butter and dust with some demerara sugar for crunch. Bake for 15 minutes to get a nice colour and set the pastry, then reduce the temperature to 160°C fan/ 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4 and bake for a further 30 minutes to allow the pastry to cook completely on the underside. Remove from the oven and allow the pie to cool in its dish. Don’t attempt to slice it until it has cooled – the hard-earned juices will run out everywhere, which is not a good look. This pie is delicious eaten on the day of baking but can also be made a day or two in advance and kept in the fridge, or on the counter if it’s not too hot out.
Whip the oat cream and fold in the maple syrup. Spoon the mix into a suitable container with a lid and freeze. It’s ready when it’s frozen. Simple as that. When you come to serve it, allow it to thaw slightly before attempting to scoop or cut.
To serve, warm the pie a little if you like, or just slice it and serve it. Warm pie is very nice contrasted against the cold of the frozen oat cream, but on a hot day, cold and cold is always refreshing. It’s also a nice idea to put the whole pie on the table with a bowl of oat cream by the side, but far be it for me to tell you what to do with your pie.
Cooking For People by Mike Davies (Pavilion, £30) is out now
Photography: Liz Haarala and Max Hamilton
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