Roasted Plums Dessert

These are busy days and with the beginning of the school year we understand and appreciate the value of "easy" cooking even more than we usually do. This simple dessert that I came up with the other day perfectly fits into this category. It is also a nice seasonal dessert made of plums, which are now their tastiest peak, and ice cream.

I roasted the plums in an oven until they got soft and juicy. Then I prepared an ice cream-cookie topping for them. It melted on warm plums into a wonderful vanilla cream. Simple and delicious.



Roasted Plums Dessert
(Makes 6 portions)

Ingredients:
2 lb round black plums,
2 tbsp brown sugar,
1 pint Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream,
1/2 cup digestive or graham cookies, crushed,
2 tbsp pistachios or slivered almonds to decorate.

Preparation:
1. Melt ice cream until soft. Add crushed cookies and mix gently. Freeze again.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Cut plums in halves, remove stones, and slice them into thick wages. Sprinkle with sugar and mix.



4. Put a sheet of wax paper on a cookie sheet. Spread the plums on top and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Let them cool until just warm.
5. Divide plums into serving bowls or plates, scoop ice cream on top, decorate with nuts and serve.

Bread and Kale Gnocchi

During my recent vacations in Poland I did not cook at all but ate a lot. I enjoyed Polish food and most of all Polish bread. I think we have one of the best breads in the world and the richest variety of it.

In any Polish home it is almost religious to have plenty of bread in a bread box. But, because we are so obsessed with bread, we often buy too much of it. Then, on the next day, we cannot resist buying a new batch straight from the bakery, fresh and warm and this way we repeatedly end up with significant amounts of old bread which, although still good on the next day, cannot compete with the fresh one.

Unfortunately, we do not recycle bread, not even to feed animals. The only way then to use old bread is to cook with it. Today's recipe, which comes from the Italian cuisine where this gluten loaded delicacy is also very popular, is one of the great ideas how to recycle old bread. Not surprisingly, Italians being Italians use bread leftovers to make yet another variety of gnocchi.

For this particular recipe I used different types of old bread which I happened to have, mostly whole wheat and country style. Just to make it more healthy and nutritious I added kale, which also enriched the taste of my gnocchi, which can be served with butter or butter fried sage.



Bread and Kale Gnocchi

Ingredients:
2 lb of one or two-day old bread, such as country style, cut into smaller chunks,
1/2 lb kale, preferably Tuscan,
3 eggs,
1/2 cup all purpose flour,
salt,
a pinch of nutmeg,
6 tbsp unsalted butter,
8-10 sage leaves
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan.

Preparation:
1. Place bread in a large bowl and cover with milk. Let it soak for about an hour. Squeeze the milk well out and place the bread in a food processor.
2. Chop roughly kale and blanch it in a hot water. Drain well on the colander and add to the soaked bread. Puree all the ingredients until smooth.
3. Transfer the mixture to the large bowl. Sift in flour, add eggs, 1/3 cup Parmesan, salt and nutmeg. Mix well.



4. Bring to boiling a large pot of salted water. Scoop a portion of the mixture on a soup spoon and drop into a pot by dipping the spoon in boiling water. Let the gnocchi afloat and cook on a low temperature for about 4 minutes.



5. Drain the first batch of gnocchi and follow with the remaining batter.
6. To finish the dish, fry the butter in a small pot until it bubbles. Add sage leaves and fry them until crispy for about a minute. Pour the hot butter and sage on gnocchi and finish with Parmesan.

Peach Crostata

Crostata is a type of Italian, rustic pie or tart. It is very easy to make, does not require any special baking pan or skills. I make mine in a food processor, which is even easier.

There are many crostata doughs. I have been often experimenting with a basic crostata base adding different types of flour or nuts and trying it with different toppings.

Crostata can be made with almost any seasonal fruit. Even those most juicy once like blueberries or raspberries are good since you can always add extra flour to absorb the juice.

Peach crostata made with local peaches has recently become my favorite crostata variety. Locally grown peaches are now wonderfully sweet and aromatic. For that particular crostata I make a base with whole wheat flour and finish my crostata with pistachios to add crunchiness.

So today, I offer you a summer peach crostata. When I serve it, straight from the oven, it often disappears before it even cools down completely.



Peach Crostata

Ingredients:
6 peaches,
1/4 cup brown sugar,
1 tbsp all purpose flour,
2 tbsp pistachios (preferably Iranian, for their green color)
1 and 1/2 stick cold, unsalted butter,
1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour,
1/2 cup wheat flour,
1/2 tsp salt,
1 tbsp sugar,
1/4 cup iced water.

Preparation:
1. Put both flours, salt, and 1 tbsp sugar in a food processor. Pulse until blended. Add butter cut into cubes and pulse again until crumbles form. Pour in iced water and run the engine until a smooth dough forms.
2. Place a dough between plastic foil and make a disc. Cool the dough for at least an hour.
3. Cut the peaches in halves, remove the stones and cut into thick slices.
4. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out into a 16-inch large circle.
5. Mix brown sugar and flour and dust on top of the dough.
6. Arrange slices of peaches on top, leaving a two inches wide edge around. Sprinkle the top with pistachios.



7. Preheat oven to 400F.
8. Fold the edges on top of fruits and let the crostata chill in a refrigerator again, for 10-15 minutes.



9. Bake crostata for about 45 minutes until light gold and peaches bubble.
Cool down at serve.