Talking Food with Cory Bahr: Peach Crostata

CORY: I'm Chef Corey Bahr, and today we're talking peaches. If you go to the farmer's market right now, there's peaches from everywhere. Peaches from Alabama, peaches from Calhoun, but my favorite peaches are from my backyard. We're going to go out back and pick a few peaches for a peach crostata, right here behind Parish Restaurant. These are our first peaches of the season. This one looks about ready, little bit firm still. That's gonna be great. I'm not the only one that loves our peaches back here. It seems like some birds do as well. We've got a few peaches off our tree. Let's go to the kitchen and make our crostata. Alright, so we're not getting too shabby with this I just cut around the seed. I left the skin on because these ripe peaches and they have a thinner skin you know they're they're ready to go. So we'll just cut them in nice chunks, whatever works, you know kind of uniform but they don't have to be. Right into the bowl like that. These are right, these are perfect. They're full of perfume and sugar. So we're only going to do things that are going to enhance the flavor of these peaches. We're going to start by adding something that I love with peach. Maybe a little unconventional but it works: lime zest. You don't want to go too deep. About like that just to see a little color change throughout your limes. What you can do at home also is by cinnamon sticks, that you have your microplane, same thing a little bit of fresh cinnamon. As you guys know by now I'm an advocate for whole spices. This is nutmeg, a little goes a long way just to enhance the flavor a little bit and help bring out the juices. We're going to add a little bit of sugar in the raw, fresh ginger. The ginger adds a nice spiciness. Our good friend Tammi Arender brought us some fresh basil from her garden. Just a couple of leaves. We're going to fold that together. That's what I'm talking about. That's exciting right there. All the flavors of summer really the basil, the peach, all go together so well. So next we're going to show you how to make the crust. I have our pastry chef from Parish Restaurant. This is Savannah. So she's gonna form the dough. Savanna, I'm gonna let you work through here.

SAVANNA: Always make sure to flour your rolling pin as well as your dough.

CORY: How thin are you gonna roll the dough for this?

SAVANNA: Maybe a quarter of an inch thick. If you get it...

CORY: Tell me what to do.

SAVANNA: Do your best to make a roundish shape, because it is free form it doesn't have to be perfect, you're going to hold it along. If it's too thick, it'll be crispy, and it's gonna float a lot of the liquid. You're gonna have a really soggy crust and nobody wants that.

CORY: No soggy crust.

SAVANNA: No soggy crust.

CORY: Don't throw this dough away. Whatever you got left over, you can probably make two. So we'll throw that to the side. How's that work? Pretty good?

SAVANNA: Good.

CORY: We're just going to transfer this to our lined baking sheet. And so from here, we're just going to spoon some of our filling in the center.

SAVANNA: Make sure you leave a generous inch or so around the filling so you have enough to fold over.

CORY: So a lot of people are wondering why didn't you put like lime juice or any other kind of liquid in here, the peaches are full of nectar. So what you really want to do is let that nectar cook out of these peaches and form its own sauce. All right, I'm gonna let you wrap it up.

SAVANNA: It doesn't have to be perfect. The whole point is that it's not, basically. It'll still look really pretty when it's done.

CORY: So we're just going to go a nice little light egg wash on the outside. And again it will help contain those juices coming out of those peaches as they're cooking. And then a little bit of sugar in the raw. It cooks nicely and caramelizes on the outside and as a nice little crunch. We're going to go over to the oven. We're going to go in about 18 minutes at 350 degrees. There it is nice golden brown. Pie dough cooked all the way through looks perfect. They say what's more American than mom and apple pie. I say peach pie or peach crostata here at Parish Restaurant. We make our own ice cream. Savanna makes our own ice cream every day. So we love to finish things like this with a vanilla ice cream. Right on top. There you have it: backyard peach crostata. Basil from our friends, vanilla ice cream, touch of ginger, and some hard spices.

.