Peach Tarte Tatin and Cheese Straws

Summer has ended very abruptly; mornings and evenings have become quite chilly, almost overnight it seems. Ah, the cool breeze of fall! It’s like God’s gift for summer’s enduring patience.   

To celebrate the cool weather, I decided to tackle puff pastry again! This time I tried making “quick” puff pastry, where the butter is incorporated into the flour (much like pie crust) and then the dough itself is layered to achieve the flakiness. This is in contrast to the alternating butter and dough layers of “classic” puff pastry. The quick kind was quite good (what wouldn’t taste good with all that marvelous French butter?), though less flaky and more cookie-like. It is, however, magnitudes faster and easier to make. So, something very good requiring a ton of work versus something pretty good requiring much less effort… For the tired perfectionist, this will be the cause of many a kitchen dilemma!

These just may have been the last peaches of the season. Well, it certainly was the last peach pie of the project. Quite a glorious ending to the fruit, I might add. Huge chunks of sweet, syrup-drizzled peaches on pastry crust… Yum!

I also made cheese straws (flavored with paprika and parmesan) with the leftover pastry scraps. You can see my overgrown basil and mint pots in the background. I wish pastry grew on trees like my herbs…

I had a nice outdoor picnic with pie, pastry, coffee, and conversation. I think this is how I will fill my weekends for the time being (or perhaps indefinitely :). Also, this marks the halfway point of my project! I feel like I’ve made thousands of pies and I should be nearly done by now, but all this was just half and not quite a hundred. I don’t think I realized the immensity of the project when I started (does one ever?). But it’s been tremendous fun and a great source of energy (you know the kind where you spend energy to re-energize). And it does mean that I’ll have to step up my pace in the months ahead. So, here’s to even more baking!