Friday, August 24, 2012

French Fridays with Dorie - Peach (Pêche) Melba with Pumpkin Seed Brittle


Today´s recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is Peach (Pêche) Melba.




The Peach Melba is a well-known French dessert, invented around 1893 by the French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) at the Savoy Hotel, London to honour the Australian soprano, Nellie Melba (1861-1931). The classic elements of this dessert are vanilla ice cream, poached peaches, raspberry coulis, and slithered almonds. Crème Chantilly was added later. The original recipe was published in the “Guide Culinare”. I took the liberty of leaving out the almonds and making some pumpkin seed brittle to serve with this dessert instead.




Pumpkin seed brittle is wonderful with this dessert - I have seen so many "Peach Melbas" on so many restaurant, café and ice-cream parlor menues, that this seemed like a welcome "twist".




This is a classic dessert, particularly good in summer time not only because of the cool ice cream but also because it combines two terrific sweet summer fruits. This recipe is all about delicious vanilla ice cream, raspberry coulis, ripe Spanish pink peaches poached with sugar, a real vanilla bean, organic lemon peel and a few leaves of my lemon verbena plant, I love using this herb for baking and infusing teas, it has a wonderful lemon scent and it is a wonderful ingredient in Dorie´s recipe for the poaching liquid.




Less known desserts that Auguste Escoffier created for some other very famous ladies are the “Fraises Sarah Bernardt” (strawberries with ice cream and pineapple puree), “Poires Mary Garden” (poached pears with raspberry coulis and cream), or “Coup Emma Calvé” (poached cherries with ice cream and raspberry coulis) – seemingly long forgotten creations of this famous French Chef.




To see all the other Doristas´ summery creation of the Peach Melba, please click here.
This is the 100th post for this group from the book “Around my French Table” by Dorie Greenspan.
Congratulations to all the Doristas that actually managed to prepare all the 100 dishes so far!




Recipe for Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Ingredients

125 grams (4.4 ounces) pumpkin seeds (depending on how much brittle you would like to have, just weigh the pumpkin seeds and double the amount of sugar you are using)
250 grams (8.8 ounces) white sugar

Preparation

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a medium-sized (dry) pan, lighty roast the pumpkin seeds until they smell nutty and aromatic, do not forget to stir while roasting, set aside.
3. To a medium sized sauce pan, medium heat, add the sugar and let it caramelize until it turns a light amber color.
4. Add the roasted pumpkin seeds to the pan and stir right away, a wooden spoon works best.
5. Take the pan off the heat.
6. Then immediately spread the caramel onto the prepared baking sheet  -  BE CAREFUL: this is extremly hot and it is therefore a very good idea to keep a bowl of ice water close by, in case you get some hot and extremly sticky caramel on your fingers - instead of spreading it out, you can also make about twenty or so tablespoon sized rounds.
7. Let the caramel cool completely on the baking sheet.
8. Break into odd sized chunks and keep in a cookie tin between layers of parchment paper (no humidity, or the brittle will "sweat" and stick like crazy).



39 comments:

  1. Your dessert looks amazing! Love the idea of the pumpkin seed brittle. I would love to know how you made it. The other desserts you describe sound wonderful too. Thanks for such a great post!

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    1. Candy, I will add the (short) instructions for the brittle to my post.

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    2. Candy, I have added the recipe for the Pumpkin Seed Brittle to my Peach Melba post - if you have any other questions, please let me know.

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    3. Thanks so much! I can't wait to try it!!!

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  2. I never would´ve thought of these dessert if it wasn´t for this group. Of course I´ll have to wait till peaches are in season. The brittle is a great addition, some needed crunch! Wonderful pics. Have a great weekend Andrea!

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    1. Thank you, Paula - for a brief moment I was thinking of substituting the peaches with some other fruit, just for a brief moment - what was I thinking, Peach Melba with fruits other than peaches and raspberries?! Seriously, this is a nice summery dessert. You will love making it when peaches are in season.

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  3. Beautiful photos, as always. You've made me curious about growing lemon verbana. Is it hard to grow? Do you get a lot of use out of it? I also love the pumpkin brittle idea - it sounds excellent and looks beautiful.

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    1. Lemon verbena, not to be confused with lemon balm, is quite easy to grow, the most difficult step is trying to procure a seedling, once you have one, it grows like crazy and you should snip away at it all summer, that encourages growth even more. When the temperatures fall, the plant will loose its leaves. So keep it inside in a not too cool place. This is one of my favorite herbs to grow and I love to make a tea with the leaves. Hope that helps!

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  4. Beautifully presented. I skipped the almonds, too. Your pumpkin brittle seems like a much more elegant addition.

    Looking forward to seeing what you do with the next 100 recipes (and beyond)!

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    1. Teresa, thank you - Ha! - the next one hundred recipes, the thought makes me happy and a gasp for air at the same time...This is such a wonderful group and being part of it is even more wonderful!

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  5. Looks delicious. I just left the almonds out because I had forgotten to buy them, but your brittle really adds a classy (and I'm sure tasty) touch to your dish.

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    1. Rose, thank you so much, almonds are wonderful but some dishes seem to need an extra "touch".

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  6. Andrea, Looks luscious! And I love the idea of pumpkin seed brittle…such a great accompaniment to this wonderful dessert! Happy Friday!!

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    1. Thank you, Kathy - glad that everyone enjoyed this dish so much!

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  7. The Peach Melba looks delicious:) I love the Pumpkin Seed Brittle - great idea.

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    1. Geraldine, thanks, this was a fun and easy dish to prepare!

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  8. Lovely. That Escoffier was quite the "ladies man", wasn't he?
    The pumpkin seed brittle was a nice touch. (P.S. I printed out the chutney recipe and I hope to get a chance to make it over the weekend).

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    1. Yes, Cher, I had heard that he quite "liked" the company of many famous ladies and it shows when you look at his dessert creations. Fun facts.

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  9. What a gorgeous presentation - that would have been superb with the rest of the dessert as I feel mine needed a little more crunch. Nice work.

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    1. Thank you, Mardi, the brittle added some nice "crunch" and made for a decent presentation.

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  10. Ooh, you really kicked this up a notch! Love the brittle...and also learning about some of Escoffier's other dessert inventions :)

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    1. Liz, I had a wonderful time doing a bit of "research" on Monsieur Escoffier before preparing the Peach Mleba.

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  11. Looks wonderful! I didn't know about his other desserts, he definitely had a thing for fruit and ice cream! Love the idea of pumpkin seed brittle, yum!

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    1. Thank you, Erin - I must say that I have had my share of Peach Melba in my life and it is ever present on tons of menues around here that it just needed a bit of "fancing up" for this celebratory post.

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  12. Thank you for the Escoffier history lesson. Now I am curious to know who Mary Garden and Emma Calve are. Don't we love Google - that's where I am going next. Your presentation of brittle is a perfect and unique "look" to this classic dessert. May I nudge you to share the recipe? I always learn something from your Posts, Andrea. I really like that.

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    1. Mary, I have added the recipe for the Pumpkin Seed Brittle to the post, if you have any questions, let me know.

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  13. That looks lovely and I like the pumpkin seed brittle idea. It all goes so well together. I, too, printed out the
    recipe for the chutney, I hope to make it soon, sounds wonderful. Thanks again, and have a great weekend.

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    1. Thanks so much, hope that you will like the recipe for the zucchini chutney!

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  14. your brittle sounds really delicious and different! :) and it looks kind of like stained glass, how neat!

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    1. Alice, I thought that the Peach Melba would be nice with a bit of "crunch" added and, besides, I love pumpkin seed brittle.

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  15. Hi Andrea! Are those bees on your serving glasses? I love what you've done with this recipe. The pumpkin seed brittle sounds wonderful. I will try it soon. I recently made pine nut brittle that was swirled into ice cream. I'll bet your brittle would work well that way too. Happy 100th. I've so enjoyed discovering your blog and getting to know you as we cook together. Your creativity and style are so inspiring.

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    1. Betsy, yes, those are bees on the serving glasses, they are some of my favorite glasses. Pine Nut Brittle sounds so wonderful too, whenever I go the Italian market, I buy pine nuts, they are a bit difficult to come by, but the idea of making brittle with that and to swirl it into ice cream sounds delicious. And thank you so much for your wonderful comment, it is a wonderful experience to be able to cook along with you and all of the other incredibly talented Doristas/bloggers.

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  16. I've seen several peach melba for this French Fridays with Dorie series this time (before that I didn't know what peach melba means), and now I'm extremely impressed with your version with Pumpkin Seed Brittle. This is so gorgeous. I've seen other kinds of brittle but not with seeds, and yours are simply beautiful when the light goes through! I love your dessert - very sophisticated!

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    1. Thank you so much, Nami - I appreciate your lovely comment very much! Sometimes it is fun to play around with recipes and the brittle was just an idea that I had to make this well-known dessert stand out a bit.

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  17. Andrea - I love the pumpkin seed brittle. And it is so funny that you see Pêche Melba everywhere there while we never see it here! I have had Fraises Sarah Bernhardt but never the other two, which sound lovely. I wish I had known about them for my Disappearing Desserts post! :) I used strawberries because they were ripe and local - but I like the color of the raspberries better - a much deeper red! Thanks for sharing this recipe! Liebe Grüße aus Tucson! ~ David

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    1. Lieber David, thank you so much for taking the time to comment on this post - your pêche melba post was a very nice reminder to make this wonderful French dessert again as soon as we get ripe, sweet peaches from Italy or Spain around here. Unfortunately, this dessert has gotten a bit of a bad rap around here because while you can find it on so many menues, it is not always pepared in the nicest of ways...strawberries sound (and looked) very nice with this too - it is always best to go with what´s in season!
      Liebe Grüße,
      Andrea

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