Recipe of the Week: Roasted fruit
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I woke up last week to rain and cold, and padded out to the kitchen in slippers (holy cow, it’s only mid-September and I already had to drag out the fuzzy slippers!) and without thinking, I turned on the oven. At the time, I had no idea what I would put inside it, until I looked at the fruit bowl.
Apples, unripe bananas and still-hard peaches.
Meanwhile, our house guest Lisbeth came downstairs and looked at the wet, chilly day ahead for her in the cabbage field. Such is the downside of a globetrotting plant breeder: Sometimes you have to work in the rain.
“How would you like to be my guinea pig?” I said. “I’m going to roast this fruit.”
Toast and roasted fruit sounded like a light, healthy breakfast. And from past visits, I knew that Lisbeth, who visits us once or twice a year, prefers to eat that way. But what I didn’t know was that she is also allergic to fruit in its raw stage. It makes her mouth and throat itch and burn, and she sometimes gets a rash. Cooked fruit, however, doesn’t bother her.
She was thrilled to have the apples and peaches, but she would take a pass on the bananas (she doesn’t like them).
I quartered the apples and peaches, then peeled the still-green bananas and cut them into chunks (Lisbeth might not like bananas, but I do). I sprayed a little cooking oil in a Pyrex baking dish and arranged the fruit inside. Then I put the dish in the oven and took a shower. When I returned half an hour later, the bananas had browned and turned glossy and soft at the edges. The peaches had slumped into gold pillows and tasted absolutely ambrosial. The apples had wrinkled and shriveled the most, and when I bit into one, it had a slightly granular texture. Like sugar-grit.
Everything had that fruit-times-10 intensity and sweetness, as the moisture had been evaporated and sugars were concentrated.
Lisbeth and The Husband had to do some work before the fruit was finished, but I left a covered bowl on the counter for a midmorning snack.
When I came home later that night, Lisbeth asked for the recipe. I didn’t have one then, and even after doing a little more experimenting, I don’t have one now. But here is how I managed.
