Peach Melba – Australia Day dessert!
Whilst not exactly Australian, this dessert was originally created for Dame Nellie Melba so if you want to claim Pavlova as ours, which some say you can, then this specialty can comfortably tag along. Skill level: low
As usual, I researched quite a few versions of this dessert and landed with my own version which I hope you will also enjoy. I thought many of the recipes contained way too much sugar, so I cut mine back, but it still tasted quite sweet. Perhaps I am just a bitter man!
Ingredients
6 whole fresh firm yellow Australian peaches
2 punnets of Australian raspberries
1 litre of Australian water
1 Australian lemon (half for the peaches, half for the coulis (sauce))
200gms of Australian caster sugar
100gms Australian icing sugar
1 tspn mixed spice (yep, the Christmas one)
1 splash of Australian brandy (French will also work)
1 Australian vanilla bean (Madagascan or Tahitian will also work)
1 lashing of Australian ice cream
and (optional)
1 garnish of fresh Australian spearmint for presentation! (in my photo I used parsley for the garnish as I had no spearmint handy! It was either going to be parsley or celery. Lettuce was a little weird!)
Method
Scrape the Australian (or Madagascan) vanilla bean to remove all that fabulous centre and place it into a large saucepan. Add the Australian water, caster sugar, the mixed spice, the splash of brandy and the juice of half the lemon. Turn up the heat and let the sugar dissolve. While the sugar is dissolving, cut the peaches in half and remove the stone. It will come our cleanly.
Once the sugar has dissolved, place the halved peaches into the pot and bring to the boil, lid on. Once boiled turn the gas or the heat level down to very low and let it simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes. While this is simmering, make the raspberry coulis (sauce)!
Raspberry sauce.
Place the two punnets of raspberries, the other half’s lemon juice and the icing sugar into a large sieve. Using a spatula (mine is silicon and fabbo) press the berries into the mesh of the sieve to force the juice into a smaller bowl below. The result is amazing. Once finished you will be left with a bowl of very serious raspberry sauce and a huge amount of raspberry seed pulp that didn’t make it through the sieve holes. You can eat this pulp, don’t share it, just eat it! It’s called the ‘cook’s treat’!
Chill the sauce man. Just chill.
Why would anyone colour food with artificial products when you can make this rich red colour in your own kitchen?
The skin of the peaches will appear wrinkled when they’re ready to come off the heat. Put them aside and let them cool. Don’t discard the cooking water! Once cooled, peel the skin cleanly off each half peach and discard. Place the peeled peaches back into the cooled liquid they were cooked in and chill them until they’re ready to be served.
Peeling poached peaches will not be the highlight of your day, but as a chef, you need to persist because the result is worth every drag of your blunt butter knife to achieve this awesome task!
To serve, obtain a large scoop of Australian vanilla ice-cream, place your peaches atop the ice cream, in an Australian way, and pour the raspberry coulis (sauce) like it’s your last meal!
OMG. This is unbelievable! They are seriously so good you. You really should make a double batch! You will wish you had skipped the main meal and gone straight to dessert!
Now this as an Australian dessert - homemade!
Enjoy! You’re going to love this dish!
Happy Australia Day.
Brendan Blake
