ROAST MONKFISH WITH PARMA HAM

At the weekend, if my dad isn’t coming for his dinner on Sunday (which he rarely does these days as he takes his lady friend to lunch instead), we try to cook something different and a bit special.  My dad is not fond of fancy food so when we’re not catering for him we can be a bit more adventurous.

Last weekend I plonked a pile of cook books in front of Nick and suggested that he choose something tasty.  After a few minutes he picked out a recipe for roast monkfish.

Roast monkfish, or gigot de lotte in French, is one of our favourite things to choose in a restaurant in France but this recipe is from Gino D’Acampo’s book Fantastico, so that makes it an Italian version.  He calls it coda di rospo al parma.

Basically it’s a monkfish tail, stuffed with anchovies, garlic and breadcrumbs, wrapped in Parma ham and roasted on a bed of new potatoes and onions.

We hadn’t got any tins or jars of anchovies in stock but we did have some anchovy paste that we brought from France earlier in the year.  We also had a pack of Parma ham.  This had already crossed the English Channel three times!  We bought it in France in August, didn’t use it so brought it home, still didn’t use it so took it back to France where it still didn’t get used so we brought it back again.  It was definitely time to use it up !!

We have cooked monkfish like this before but roasting it on the potatoes was a great idea.  Mind you, we both had to read and re-read the recipe to work out the timings as it was not at all clear.  At first it looked like the potatoes should be cooked for nearly an hour before adding the fish, which didn’t seem right, unless you like your potatoes pretty crozzled. 

But we sussed it out and I have to say, it was absolutely delicious, a real treat, and we will definitely be making it again.  You could use a nice chunky piece of cod if you can’t get hold of monkfish, and pancetta in place of the Parma ham.  

Ingredients  (for two servings)

40g butter

1 onion, sliced

400g new potatoes, halved, or ordinary potatoes quartered or cut into chunks

2 sprigs fresh thyme

1 clove of garlic

4 anchovy fillets, or a good squirt of anchovy paste

2 tblsp finely chopped parsley

30g fresh white breadcrumbs (we used wholemeal as we didn’t have any white bread in the house)

2 tblsp olive oil

500g fillet of monkfish tail

8 slices Parma ham

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk 6

Put the butter in a roasting tin in the oven so that it melts while the oven warms up and you prepare the potatoes and onions.  Tip them into the tin and shuffle them about so they are coated with the butter.  Season with salt and pepper and add the thyme.  Roast for 35 minutes, turning occasionally so the potatoes brown evenly.

Put the garlic, anchovies, parsley olive oil and breadcrumbs into a food processor and process until well mixed to make a paste.

Cut the monkfish fillet into two and spread the paste on top of one piece.  Lay the other piece on top and wrap the Parma ham or pancetta around it to make a parcel.  Tie string around it to hold it all in place.

After the 35 minutes, put the fish on top of the partly cooked potatoes and return to the oven for another 20 minutes.

RIESLING WINE CAKE, and the strange case of “whose recipe is it anyway?”

A few of you who have been reading this blog for a while might remember the episode a couple of years ago when I, along with many others, was ticked off by Dan Lepard’s editor/business manager/civil partner, David Whitehouse, for writing up one of his recipes on my blog.  Since then I have paid special attention to saying where recipes come from and in any case I only ever use my own photos,  but my copy of “Short and Sweet” remains unopened and gathering dust on the bottom shelf, as if jinxed. 

You will see the reason for revisiting this sorry episode when you read on............

I became a member of the Clandestine Cake Club this year (it was bound to happen) and in August I was at last able to get to one of their local meetings.  I volunteered Nick to come with me as my guest.  For those who don’t know (there might be a few!) the CCC is a UK club with branches up and down the country and the idea is that you bake a cake, take it to the meeting, introduce it, eat it, eat everybody else’s cake and, having eaten more cake than you could ever have imagined, you take away slices of all the cakes at the meeting.  Marvellous !!

Anyway, Nick decided he would also like to make a cake to take to the meeting.  The theme was “sweet and savoury” so I made a savoury cake to a Rachel Khoo recipe, which was very nice, but I wouldn’t make it again.  Nick hunted for a recipe he would like to do and found one for Riesling Wine Cake in the Hairy Bikers Baking book that I had borrowed from the library.  This is the book that went with their Bakeation series on TV. 

There were lots of beautiful cakes at the meeting and whilst mine was said to be very nice, his got plenty of attention and even a special mention in the write-up after the event.  Harrumph. 

The savoury cakes at the CCC meeting, with mine at the front.

With the next CCC meeting coming up I decided it was time to blog about the last one and looked for the Riesling cake recipe on the web, only to find no mention of it at all in any association with the Hairy Bikers.  However, I did find it here where it is credited to another TV chef, Simon Rimmer.  In fact it appears in the Hairy Bikers’ book word for word exactly the same as you see it credited to Simon Rimmer on this website, even the photograph is the same.  Now there’s a thing.

The sweet cakes, with Nick’s at the front.

To be fair, in the introduction to the cake in their book, the Hairies don’t say they made the cake, they say they ate it in Germany and “loved it so much” they had to find out how to make it.  Obviously they did but are not giving any clue where the recipe came from.

So, what is that all about then?  Is the recipe really Mr Rimmer’s and does he know they put it in their book?

Maybe the Hairies paid Mr Rimmer handsomely for the privilege of using the recipe, or bought him a pint.  Or maybe it was the other way round, because curiously, the photo on the website looks like it was taken by the same person who took all the photos in the Hairies’ book.  The plot thickens, we will probably never know what the answer is and …. how much does it matter in any case? 

Anyway, I have to give credit to Nick, it was a stunningly good cake and looked the business topped with a few redcurrants from our garden.  It’s a very sophisticated cake.  You can taste the wine, the orange and the cardamom, and it’s gluten free.  He has made it again since but omitted the syrup that you pour on the top, which was better we think.  The syrup makes it extremely moist and boozy but we actually liked it better without it.

Nick is now a full member of our local branch of CCC.

The link I gave for the recipe on the web here has disappeared, as they do, so I have written the recipe below.

Ingredients

For the cake

12 cardamon pods

150g light soft brown sugar

4 lge eggs

zest of 1 lemon

zest of 2 oranges

100ml sunflower oil

150ml Riesling wine

200g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

For the wine syrup (omit if you prefer)

200ml Riesling wine

150g caster sugar

Method

Grease and line the base of a 25cm round springform tin.  Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°fan / gas mk4.  

In a mortar and pestle, bash the cardamom pods until split.  Tip them out onto a plate, pick out the seeds and put them back in the mortar, discarding the pods.  Grind the seeds to a powder.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until lighter and creamy.  Add the citrus zests and cardamom and beat until combined.  Whisk in the oil and wine until smooth and thick.

Mix the baking powder with the ground almonds then fold into the batter.  Pour into the prepared tin.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until well risen and golden.  Cool in the tin for 15 minutes before removing from the tin*.

*If using the syrup (optional) leave the cake in the tin, put the wine and sugar into a small saucepan, bring slowly to the boil, stirring all the time.  Simmer for 5 minutes.

Pour the syrup over the cake while still warm and in its tin, a little at a time so that it soaks in.  If the syrup pools on the top of the cake prick the surface with a skewer.  Leave to cool completely in the tin.

Serve decorated with a few redcurrants or raspberries, a dusting of icing sugar and a little cream or crème fraîche if you like.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

ROAST SQUASH WITH SCARY SAUSAGES FOLLOWED BY SPICED PUMPKIN AND APPLE CAKE

We are not very fond of Halloween in this house.  To be truthful, I have never liked Halloween very much at all, even as a child.  I have no happy memories of the children’s parties I attended here or in Scotland where I spent a couple of years as a little girl.  All that apple bobbing, silly costumes and daft ghost stories ~ I never quite got into it.  The “trick or treat” custom of recent decades is something we are not keen on either.

In recent years we have been known to either go out on Halloween, leaving the house in complete darkness to deter the trick or treaters.  Or to turn off all the lights, draw the curtains, keep the television on low and hope that nobody ventures up our long, dark drive.

However, we do like a bit of pumpkin or butternut squash and are partial to a chilli flavoured sausage so on Halloween I decided to make a bit of effort to get into the mood.  I even got a bag of fun size chocolates in, just in case the doorbell rang and we were confronted by a small group of children in scary masks bribing us to give them chocolate in return for not slashing the car tyres, pouring weed killer on the roses or removing the hinges from the gate .

I simply Googled “squash and sausages” and several tasty looking recipes turned up, of which I chose this one.  It’s essentially a tray bake of vegetables with sausages tucked in and it was, I have to say, absolutely scrumptious.

This is another one of those recipes that puts a tasty meal on the table in less than an hour from scratch, with very little washing up.  The original recipe states red peppers but I used the last red and green ones in our greenhouse, plus fresh rosemary from the garden.  This is destined to become another favourite of the house.  In fact it could almost be described as healthy with all those lovely veg ~ if you ignore the sausages that is.  (Or use low fat ones, which are hardly the same, but better than nothing.)

Next time I think I might add some whole garlic cloves and a sliced chilli to the veg for a bit of extra flavour, just to see what it’s like.

For afters we had a slice of spiced apple and pumpkin cake, served with a dollop of plain yoghurt.

I spotted the recipe in a blog called “Penelope’s Pantry“ and I have been waiting for just the right opportunity to make it.  Halloween seemed like as good a time as any.  I made a couple of adaptations but you can see the original here.

It’s made as a tray bake and it’s incredibly moist ~ even more so the day after baking, very much like a dessert cake with almost the consistency of a bread and butter pudding. 

I adapted the recipe to make it using an all-in-one method, as per Delia’s advice and it worked really well.  Next time I think I would use more ginger and possibly some ground cinnamon as well, to make it even spicier.

Ingredients for the squash and sausage bake

a pack of 6 sweet chilli sausages, or any other sausages you like

1 large red pepper, or 1 small red and 1 small green pepper, deseeded and cut into chunks

1 red onion, peeled and cut into wedges

½ a butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into wedges

2 sprigs rosemary

2 tblsp olive oil

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.

Put all the prepared veg into a large bowl.  Add the olive oil, salt and pepper, the leaves of the rosemary and mix together.  (This ensures all the ingredients are nicely coated with oil.)

Tip this all into a roasting tin and tuck the sausages amongst the veg.

Bake for about 40 minutes, until the veg are tender and the sausages cooked through, removing from the oven after 20 minutes, to shuffle the veg and turn the sausages over so they brown all over.

Serve with mashed potatoes, bread, or other veg of your choice.

Serves 2-3.

Spiced apple and pumpkin tray bake (adapted from Penelope’s Pantry with Penelope’s permission.)

1 tin Libby’s pumpkin purée, or 400g of cooked, puréed fresh pumpkin

350g Bramley apples (unpeeled weight)

1 tblsp ground ginger

225g unsalted butter at room temperature, or spreadable butter

275g light soft brown sugar

4 eggs, lightly beaten

350g self-raising flour

2tsp baking powder

2tblsp Demerara sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line the base of a roasting tin or baking tin, approx. 30 x 23 cm.

Sift the flour, baking powder and ginger into a large bowl.  Add the butter, brown sugar, and eggs and beat together until well combine, using an electric whisk or mixer.  Add the pumpkin and mix briefly to combine.

Peel, core and slice the apples.

Spread half the cake mixture into the tin and arrange half the apples on top.  Repeat with the remaining mixture and apples.  Sprinkle the Demerara sugar on top.

Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown and risen.  Leave in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool before cutting into squares.

Serve slightly warm with cream, custard, ice-cream or yoghurt, or leave to go completely cold and serve as a cake.

Cuts into 20-24 squares.

AUTOMATIC GRANARY LOAF

There’s nothing quite like fresh home-made bread is there?  The anticipation as it bakes in the oven and the aroma fills not just the kitchen but the whole house.  The frustration of waiting for it to be cool enough to cut, then the joy of the first slice, spread with a thick layer of butter – then jam on top for the second slice.  Heaven. 

Even though everyone in the world is knocking up a loaf of bread with the ease of tying their shoe laces, I confess that I have never done it.  Except in a bread making machine, which probably doesn’t count.  The idea of baking anything with yeast gives me the collywobbles.

Nick however loves making bread from scratch, the old fashioned way.  He finds the kneading and pummelling quite therapeutic and satisfying.  I find the smell and eating very satisfying !!

So when we were chez nous last week he decided to make a simple loaf of bread and to try out the automatic bread baking programme in our French oven.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the oven, but it has lots of programmes and settings, including the rotisserie, which we use quite often, a cake baking programme which I fail to see how it can work, and the bread programme.

You just put your proved bread into a cold oven, turn it on and it bakes.  No temperature setting or timing required, just some water in a tray in the bottom of the oven.  We were both a bit sceptical, but it worked perfectly.

Nick used a basic multigrain strong flour, nothing fancy, and a sachet of fast yeast from Intermarché.  He used his standard recipe which he keeps in his head, having made a basic loaf so often that he no longer needs to look at a recipe. (Which makes me feel ever so slightly inadequate as I still check the recipe before I make the chocolate cake I have been making for over thirty years !!)  He mixed it using the little dough hooks on our cheap French hand mixer, left it to rise for a couple of hours, put it in the oven and 50 minutes later it was done !!  And perfectly delicious. 

I suppose we shouldn’t really have been sceptical, or surprised , that the bread programme worked so well.  Presumably it brings the bread up to temperature slowly to give it more rise, then blasts it to bake it in the final minutes.  Similar in fact to how a bread making machine works.  Hey ho.

In fact it looked so easy that I might pluck up the courage and have a go myself.  One day.  Maybe.  In any case, as home made granary bread is a real treat for tea time, I am contributing Nick’s loaf to this month’s Tea Time Treats Challenge, organised by Karen of Lavender and Lovage, and Kate of What Kate Baked.  The current theme is “bread” and you can see the details here.

Obviously, to many people such a simple loaf is hardly worthy of a blog post, not to mention a baking challenge entry (especially having seen the other fabulous entries already linked in – what a lot of talented bakers there are around), but to me a home-made loaf is always a little miracle.  How something that tastes so good can come from a handful of simple ingredients is, I think, pretty amazing.  I don’t know why we don’t make it every time we need bread, especially when you just shove it in the oven on an automatic programme !! 

The keeping properties of this loaf are quite good.  It stays fresh in the bread bin for a couple of days and is very toastable after four days.

Nick’s automatic granary loaf recipe (adapted from the basic recipe in The River Cottage Handbook)

500g multigrain flour

7g dried yeast (one sachet)

10g salt

300ml warm water

25g butter

Method

Combine the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl, add the butter and water and mix with the dough hook attachment of your hand mixer for a few minutes, until the dough starts to come together.

Transfer the dough to an oiled surface and knead for five minutes.  Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave at room temperature or somewhere warm for at least an hour, possibly two, by which time it should have doubled in size.

Remove the dough from the bowl, flatten to knock it back, and shape it into an oval loaf.  Transfer to a baking sheet, slash the top with a sharp knife, sprinkle with a little extra flour and put it into your cold oven on the automatic bread setting.  Put 500ml of water in a baking tray in the bottom of the oven. 

Leave the house ~ so that you’re not tempted to stand in the kitchen, enjoying the lovely aroma, watching the oven and waiting for the alchemy to take place !!

Alternatively, if you don’t have an automatic setting, leave the dough to rise for a second time for thirty minutes then put into a hot oven, preheated to 240°C, for 5-10 minutes.  Reduce the temperature to 210° and bake for a further 25-30 minutes until nicely browned.

Makes one 500g loaf.

CARAWAY SEED CAKE

It was a relief when this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, was to bake something with the letter “C”.  After a few not so easy letters, this one offered a huge amount of choice: chocolate, coffee, cherry, coconut, caramel, carrot………..an almost endless list.  You can see the details on Ros’s blog here.

The other day I was browsing through a book I bought just before I retired.  (I absolutely did not need another cake recipe book but I was feeling very buoyant one lunchtime with only 4½ days left to work, so I splashed out and treated myself.)  Delia’s Cakes.

On reading the first few pages I discovered that Delia now believes there is rarely any need to cream butter and sugar separately and suggests that as long as you sift the flour really well an all-in method of mixing is fine.  She also suggests using spreadable butter where softened butter is called for.  Both of these tips appealed to me greatly as the first one saves time and the second one saves a lot of hassle trying to make sure you have butter at the right softness before you start. 

The other tip I picked up is that using one of those pleated paper liners in the tin is good with cakes that are to be kept for a few days as it helps to keep the cake moist.  She specifies using one for this recipe and previously I never understood the point of them but on her recommendation I went out and bought a pack.  The local shop only had packs of 40 so I have another 39 cakes to bake before I have to buy another one !!

On browsing the recipes I chose caraway seed cake because it’s such a nostalgic flavour.  I had an unopened pack of caraway seeds lurking in my baking cupboard and as soon as I opened it I was transported back to my childhood.  I could just see myself sitting on the floor at my grandma’s house, playing with the contents of her button box, listening to my mum, aunty Vera and grandma gossiping over a cup of tea and a slice of cake.  Caraway cake was a favourite in the 1950’s and 60’s, possibly because it was a very cheap way of flavouring a simple cake.  According to Wikipedia, caraway seeds have been used in baking since the 1600’s but you don’t see them being used very often these days.

The cake was obviously very quick and easy to rustle up.  It was done perfectly in the time specified, although I did get a bit concerned that it might be slightly over browned so I covered it loosely with foil for the last ten minutes.  I loved the caraway flavour ~ although I can see that it could be overdone very easily and the cake could taste rather unpleasant and medicinal.

So it is with great pleasure that I submit this cake to Alphabakes, a monthly challenge organised by Ros of More than the occasional baker and Caroline of Caroline Makes.  I shall definitely be making this cake again and delving further into Delia’s latest book.

I don’t know how many letters are left in the Alphabakes series, but, rather like a lengthy game of Scrabble, there can’t be many easy ones to go.  We haven’t had a “Z” yet but believe it or not, there is a recipe for zagablione cake in this book !!

Ingredients

175g self raising flour

175 spreadable butter (I used Anchor Lighter Spreadable as that’s what I had in stock, straight from the fridge, and it was fine)

175g golden caster sugar

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

50g ground almonds

4 tblsp milk

3 tsp caraway seeds

For the topping

2 tblsp demerara sugar

1 tblsp flaked almonds

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C /160° fan / gas mk 4.  Put a greaseproof paper liner into a 500g / 2lb loaf tin.

Sift the flour into a large bowl.  Delia suggests doing this from a good height to aerate the flour as much as possible.

Add all the other cake ingredients and beat with an electric hand mixer for about a minute until well combined and creamy.

Spread the mixture into the tin and level the top.  Sprinkle the topping ingredients evenly over the mixture.

Bake for 1 hour and 5 minutes until the cake is springy to touch.  Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

Serves 10-12.  Delia suggests the flavour improves after a couple of days, hence the benefit from the paper liner.

RED PEPPER AND LIME SOUP

We planted one pepper plant and two different chilli plants in the greenhouse this year.  Disappointingly they all turned out the same and produced exactly the same kind of peppers.  So much for the cheap plantlings at B&Q!  On the other hand, B&Q probably did us a favour as we do use a lot of peppers but not that many chillies.

We took all our ripe peppers to France with us to use up, rather than just leave them on the plant where they may or may not have been edible by the time we got back.  With them I made some red pepper and lime soup.

I have only been making soup for the last few years.  Before then I always believed it to be a bit of a palaver and not worthwhile for two people when all you have to do is open a tin.  I was converted when I stumbled across Nigella Lawson’s recipe for vegetable soup and discovered that soup is one of the easiest things to make, a great way to use a glut of vegetables or a mixture of what’s in the fridge.  All you need is a really large pan, such as a stockpot, which makes the job much easier than trying to keep all the ingredients from spluttering over the side of a normal large saucepan.

You make this soup from the same basic recipe as Nigella’s.  Add chopped vegetables (the peppers) to a cooked, chopped onion, add stock, seasoning and cook. 

This is one of my favourite soups, if only for the fabulous colour.  The lime gives it a lovely fresh flavour and it goes beautifully with some fresh crusty bread.

Ingredients

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

4 large red peppers, deseeded and chopped

1 tblsp olive oil (or a squirt of Flora Cuisine)

1 garlic clove, crushed (optional)

1 small red chilli, sliced (optional – I didn’t use it this time as I didn’t have one)

a good squirt of tomato purée

1 litre of chicken or vegetable stock (I use Marigold stock powder, which is gluten free)

juice and zest of one lime

Method

Heat the oil in a large pan or stock pot, add the onion and cook without browning for a few minutes until soft.  Add the peppers, garlic and chilli and cook with the lid on for about five minutes until the peppers are just soft, shaking the pan occasionally so they don’t catch.

Add the stock and tomato purée, cover and cook at a low simmer for 10-15 minutes. 

Either allow the soup to cool and transfer to a food processor, or use a stick blender to blitz the soup directly in the pan.  If you like your soup completely smooth, pass it through a sieve.  (I don’t mind the odd small lump so I never bother with this.)

Add the lime and reheat gently in the pan.  Go easy on the lime ~ try half of the zest and juice first and taste it.  Season with salt and pepper and serve hot with some of your favourite bread.

Serves 6.  Keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days.  Can also be frozen.

DAMSON AND MARZIPAN COBBLER

My  father turned up with a huge bag of damsons recently.  I love damsons and he loves damson pie !!  The damson tree they came from is in the garden of a house that used to belong to his parents (my grandparents).  His brother (my uncle) lives in the house next door and luckily the new owners of the tree don’t like damsons and are happy for them to be used by us.  Strangely, I’m the only person in the family who seems to use them.

Anyway, I was looking for ideas for something to do with them other than a crumble, pie, or jam, and came across a recipe on the Good Food website.  (There’s no point in my giving the link here as it’s on of the ones that disappeared from the site on 30th September.)

However, I also spotted a recipe for “apple, cherry and marzipan pie”.  This was the one made by Ruby, the young contestant in the current series of The Great British Bake Off.  I remember at the time she put some marzipan in her pie just because she likes it and………..was this the pie that Paul Hollywood said was the best he had ever tasted?  Or was that Kimberley’s?  I can’t quite remember.

I really like marzipan too so I decided to add some to my damson cobbler.  (I also put in a few strawberries and blueberries that needed using up, but they didn’t add anything to the flavour, the taste of damsons being so strong.)

The cobbler was delicious.  That intense purple colour and the sharp, strong taste of damsons were truly magnificent.  The little blobs of marzipan added a little hint of almond in every mouthful.  I shall try adding marzipan to other pies and crumbles from now on.

Of course the only problem with damsons is the stones.  It’s not an issue when you’re making jam as the stones float to the surface in cooking and can be scooped off fairly easily. 

Every year I think I should make the effort and try to stone them before I use them in a pudding, but I always give up.  I lose the will to live after about a dozen and using either a knife or a cherry stoner seems to waste so much of the damson itself. 

So I always resort to doing what my mum always did – issue a warning as you put it on the table !!  If anyone has a good method for stoning damsons I would be very pleased to hear it.

Ingredients

1kg damsons*

100g golden caster sugar

100g marzipan, cubed

For the cobbler topping

80g butter, chilled and diced

200g self-raising flour

100g golden caster sugar

150ml milk or buttermilk

a few hazelnuts, or cobnuts, chopped (I omitted these but almond flakes would also be nice)

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170°fan / gas mk 5.  Grease a 1 litre baking dish.

Tip the fruit into the dish.  Sprinkle over the 100g sugar and put into the oven while you make the cobbler topping.

Put the butter, flour and sugar into a food processor with a pinch of salt and process to breadcrumbs.  Add the milk and process again briefly to make a soft dough.

Remove the dish from the oven and dot the cubes of marzipan evenly between the damsons.  Spoon blobs of the topping mixture over the fruit.  Sprinkle the nuts on top.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling and the sponge firm – test it as you would for a cake.

Serve warm with crème fraîche, cream, custard or ice-cream.

Serves 6.

*I have since made the same recipe using a mixture of fruit, apples, pears, plums and nectarines.  It was delicious.  I think this recipe would probably work with any fruit, just putting a layer in the bottom of the dish…….