It's official. Melbourne falls into the top 10 cities I've visited in the world. Contributing to its greatness, of course, is the presence of the lovely Henrietta, my wonderful host during my time here. I have sadly reached the end of my Melbourne visit, but the sorrow is somewhat complimented by my adventures on Sunday, namely the creation of a peach crisp-pie. I am sure this exists, but a quick search revealed no results for such a concoction. As a result, naturally, I threw together a few recipes and came up with this:Peach Crisp-Crumble Pie
Dough
* 1 1/2 cups flour
* 1/2 tbsp sugar
* pinch salt
* 113 grams butter
* 5 tbsp ice water
Filling
* 5 medium peaches
* approx 2 tbsp sugar (note: feel free to add more/less based on your taste preferences. This amount yielded a not-too-sweet pie)
* approx 1 tbsp flour
Crisp
* 3/4 cup flour
* 1/2 cup oats
* 3/4 cup sugar (note: I used all white sugar because I was not thinking really, but I reckon using some brown sugar (if not mostly) is preferable)
* pinch of salt
* 113 grams butter
First, make the dough. Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Cube the butter, then toss it into the dry mixture. Coat each cube with flour mixture. You are meant to then either food process, two knives cut or pastry cut the butter into the flour mixture. I find (and Hen's mom agreed) that hands are the most effective mixers of cold butter into flour, so this is what I used. Once the mixtures resembles small crumbs, begin adding the water. I recommend going 1-2 tbsp at a time then giving a mix. Too much water is not good. When it has all come together, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and pop in the fridge for 3o minutes at the minimum.
Next, prep the filling. Some to most recipes will tell you to peel the peaches. I find this morbidly wasteful of food, time and effort. Instead, feel free to slice the peaches as uniformly as possible (for baking purposes). Throw them into a bowl and add the flour and sugar. Toss it all together. Note: I ended up completing this process a good hour before the pie was to be assembled. I'm pretty sure this is not an issue.
Lastly, create the crisp. Combine flour, oats, sugar and salt in a bowl. Cube the butter, then incorporate butter into the mixture using the same technique as utilized for the crust.
Preheat oven to 350˚ F/180˚ C. Remove the dough from the fridge. Roll out the dough and spread over a pie dish. Note: The dish we used was on the smaller side and probably could have used slightly less dough in the interest of a fully baked crust.. but so it goes. If you want to be hardcore about the whole thing, place the dish with the crust back in the fridge for 15 minutes or so. We skipped this step and went straight to the blind baking. Use pie weights/dried beans and parchment paper to weigh down the dough (see below).
Bake for about 10-12 minutes like this. After this step I deferred to Hen's lovely mum and removed the beans, then baked the crust uncovered for another 2-4 minutes. Yum! (Again, might have done OK baking slightly longer, but patience is not a concept with which I am familiar).
Finally, assemble the pie. Pour the peach mixture into the crust shell. Sprinkle the crisp/crumble over the top. Place pie on baking sheet (in case bubbling-over peach juice occurs). Bake for 40-45 minutes.
Let cool slightly (a journey to the pier for some penguin viewing and back should be sufficiently long) before consuming so pie can set. Enjoy with cream, ice cream, yog(h)urt, or as is.
