Summer, hot, peaches, cool desserts...

Ingredients

4 peaches of the yellow kind (but I may try it with percoche too some day)
Butter
16 amaretti (or 8 petit bisquits or other hard bisquits, and a pinch of cinnamon)
Cocoa powder (unsweetened)
Butter
Sugar
A glass of white wine, preferably sweet (moscato, for instance), but if you only have dry wine, just add a pinch more of sugar ^_^

Cut the peaches in two, "debone" them and dg out some of the pulp with a teaspoon.

Now the peaches must be filled. There are two fillings that I use.

1. Crush the amaretti, mix them with a teaspoon of cocoa, the minced peach pulp you removed from the peaches and four teaspoons of sugar.

2. Crush the bisquits, mix them with two teaspoons of cocoa, the minced peach pulp you removed from the peaches and six teaspoons of sugar.

Place the filling of your choice inside the half peaches and sprinkle each half-peach wiutha little more sugar (it will create a nice crust 8-9)

Smear lightly a non-stick baking pan with butter. Place the peaches in (peel on the bottom!), place one tiny bit of butter on top of each peach and spray with half a glass of white wine.

Bake for 30 minutes at 200°C.

Eat cool or at room temperature.

Alice, I happen to have all of these ingredients right now.
Guess what's for dessert tonight?!

Yum! I love amaretti and with peaches they sound divine.

-Krista

Alice -- sounds great. Here's a variation I have had great success with, too. Orange juice and rind replaces the butter (eliminating the fat) and the port wine makes a sauce that is both tasty and beautiful over the peaches.

• 8 almond or coconut macaroons (about ½ oz each)
• 1 orange
• 1 cup Port wine
• 4 TBS brown sugar
• 4 small to medium peaches
Preheat oven 400°F.
Crumble the macaroons into a small bowl. Strip the orange zest with a zester or grater and set aside half of it. Add the remaining zest to cookie mix. Juice the orange and add as much as you need to moisten the cookies. Mix to form a soft filling.
In a small saucepan, simmer the port slowly for 5 minutes to boil off the alcohol. Then stir in the sugar and remaining orange zest and pour into an ovenproof casserole. Cut the peaches in half and remove pits. Place peaches cut side up in casserole. Stuff center of peaches with filling. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until starting to glaze over. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Serve 2 halves with some syrup from the pan.

I wil try out your version too. It sounds yummy!
Deborah, let me know how they turned out!

My mom made delicious baked peaches; I don't have the recipe, but I remember that they were very simple, "unstuffed," with only a dab of butter and a sprinkling of good curry powder; hers were made most often with Del Monte canned peaches and served with game birds, quail, duck especially, wild rice on the side; she was an adventurous cook. She did them with fresh peaches as well, but I think that was some sort of simple wine/sugar syrup involved. Good on the grill as well.
Yrs, Robert

A M A Z I N G ! ! !

I made one tiny alteration. More for presentation that anything else.
After the peaches were done, I put the wine/juice/sugar drippings in a sauce pan; added some more sweet white wine; and some sweet red wine (for color).
Then I added a bit of sugar and corn starch.
Boiled it down to a thin syrup and drizzled it over the cooled peaches.

But a picture is better that words...

Deborah, they are good, aren't they?

Robert, in Italy people mostly draw a clear line in their usage of fruits as food. With the exception of lemon, fruit exists only as a dessert, alone, raw, or cooked like this, or also in raw preparations like macedonia (fruit salad) or similar. In the 1970's strawberry rositto was somewhat popuylar as "classy" food, but Italy could never accept the idea of fruits being something else than a dessert. Probably the only exception is mostarda, but even that is not appreciated by all, not even in its traditional area of production. May people refuse it because it's sweet, it's "slimey" or just because it's fruit and therefore it can't be a suitable side serving to a piece of meat . Try and serve a salad that includes sour apples of pineapple and people will .

quote:

Probably the only exception

Well, the Fritto misto alla piemontese mixes flavours a lot.
Side by side you find sausages, strange meats and fried apples, sweet semolino [my dictionary calls it semolina, mah], biscuits from Novara with chocolate and zabaglione, all together, happily sharing the same plate.

You are ready to work as a lumberjack after such a meal, nontheless it is not bad, not bad at all...

ah, and the bagnacauda with sliced apples?

[Ma e' vero che noi piemontesi siamo un po' strani]

that is also true for Sicilian food, where raisins are often part of "salted" foods. And in Lombardy we have tortelli di zucca and riso e latte. But that is not the norm, you must agree. And, yes: piemontesi are strange ^___^