i’m-not-sure-who-it’s-comforting-more food
by bam
in which we momentarily retreat to the comfort kitchen as the world wears us ragged, and sometimes our sphere of true influence has shrunken to a concentrated radius of one (maybe two on a good day…)…
the leftover challah called to me, as it so often does. every friday the braided loaf of eggy dough finds its way to our shabbat table, and every morning thereafter the mostly untouched loaf (for we tear off only a few shabbat chunks on most friday nights) whispers louder and louder from the basket where it idles in quasi-retirement.
it begs to be rescued from its shoved-aside status, to be transformed in miraculous ways. bread pudding, most often, is the solution.
this week, once i plunked the getting-staler challah onto the cutting board (my tangible reminder to do something with it) my getting-taller-by-the-hour almost-senior in high school chimed in. “oh, mom, could you make it with peaches and blueberries this time? remember you said you would?”
this was not such a radical advance, this seasonal iteration of the bread-egg-and-milk puddingy pablum. but it was a certain departure from the same-old, same-old in which i chop up apples, throw in handfuls of shriveled-up raisins or cranberries, await cloud-like perfection. this called for summery attention to be paid, called for a trip to the produce bin where i found white-fleshed peaches in all their colorless glory, and blueberries by the bushel-load.
wasn’t long till i was sinking into the familiar rhythm of this recipe i know by heart (though for good measure i nearly always pull mark bittman off the shelf — or, specifically, his “how to cook anything” bright-yellow-covered cookery volume).
once i sliced into the peaches, though, my grandma entered the room. there she was, in pure imagined vapors, standing just behind my shoulder, urging me to reach for the brown-sugar canister, where i would partake of one of my grandma’s signature summery moves: douse the sliced, moist peaches in spoonfuls of deep-brown granular sweetness, allow the peachy juices to swirl with the sugar; tuck aside while golden-hued syrup emerges, the taste of summer defined.
and that was precisely the moment i realized that this comfort food for my sweet boy was just as much comfort for me in the making. there i was alone in my kitchen — me and my bread and my cream and my summery peaches — when all of a sudden i was visited by my long-gone grandma, i was swooped back in time and in space to her cincinnati kitchen in the ivy-covered brick house as sturdy and ample as was my grandma.
i was, for one sweet interval, far far from the news of the day, far from the grown-up worries that some days so weigh me down. it was just me and days-old bread, and the alchemy of sugar and peach. who knew such potency lay just beneath the fuzzy-fleshed skin of the fruit?
it’s the one room where this summer i’ve found a joy that might make me hum. that and the porch where i read.
should you want to play along, here’s my roadmap to summery joy — the blueberry-peach bread-pudding rendition thereof….
teddy’s bread pudding, the peachy summer edition*
- 3 cups milk (or cream)
- 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, more for greasing pan
- 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
- Pinch salt
- ½ loaf sweet egg bread like challah or brioche, torn into 2-inch cubes (about 5 to 6 cups)
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 3 peaches, sliced
- 3 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 cup blueberries
- Heat oven to 350 degrees. Over low heat in a small saucepan, warm milk, butter, 1/2-cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and salt. Continue cooking just until butter melts. Meanwhile, butter a 4-to-6-cup baking dish and tear the bread into bite-sized bits. Place the bread in baking dish.
- Slice peaches into separate medium-sized mixing bowl; stir in brown sugar. Set aside (wherein magic ensues, and syrup emerges). Rinse blueberries, and allow to drain.
- Once peaches are bathing in their brown-sugary juices (anywhere from five to 10 to even 15 minutes should do it), dump fruits atop bread chunks. Stir gently.
- Pour hot milk over bread, peaches, and blueberries. Let it sit for a few minutes, poking down the occasional chunk of bread that rises to the top. Beat the eggs briefly, and stir them into bread and fruit mixture. Mix together remaining cinnamon and sugar, and sprinkle over the top. Set the baking dish in a larger baking pan, and pour hot water into the pan, to within about an inch of the top of the baking dish, effectively making a bath for your bake.
- Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until custard is set but still a little wobbly and edges of bread have browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.
inhale the endless comfort vapors….
*thank you, mark bittman, for your endless guidance and your recipe on much-splattered page 662.
what foods bring you as much comfort in the making as in the consuming?
Thank you! I needed this today 🙂 I will be trying this soon as seasonal fruits are always at hand in this house. I make something similar with peaches and blueberries called clafoutis. Essentially bread pudding without the bread. The egg custard is whipped up in a blender and poured over the fruit and baked untill slightly set, cooled, and dusted with powdered sugar. The aroma in the kitchen is almost as good as eating it. Summery heaven on a spoon.
i LOVE clafoutis!!!! yes, yes, it is very similar. a dear friend of my brother’s — a lovely soul from madrid — made a cherry clafoutis for the dinner i hosted for my bridesmaids on the eve of the eve of our wedding, and forever after clafoutis has melted my heart. the lovely soul who came to cook for us that night died shortly thereafter, and thus the soft summer fruit bake has always been especially poignant to me…..you remind me how delicious it is, and how i need to make it….thank you.
I’ve started trying to memorize poems lately–a strategy to keep my brain percolating. Li Young-Li has written a poem called, “From Blossoms,” all about the joy of summer peaches. It would make a perfect read while you’re enjoying your blueberry/peaches creation.
dear mary, i love the idea of memorizing, and yes, this delectable slice of poetry would be the place to begin (i haven’t tried memorizing in, um, forever. this oughta be interesting). i do believe this is the poem to which you refer (it’s GORGEOUS, thank you! xox):
From Blossoms
BY LI-YOUNG LEE
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.
So yummy 🙂
thank you!
Jeff and I are going to have to try Teddy’s Bread Pudding, Summer Edition, which sounds simply delicious! There’s nothing quite like the aroma of something cinnamon-y baking in the oven… In my book, cinnamon and comfort are synonyms. Love that Teddy specifically requested peaches and blueberries!
This poem by Li-Young Lee is exquisite… I had never seen it before. Thank you to Mary for mentioning it, and thank you, B., for sharing it here. I don’t know whether I could memorize these lines, but I’m definitely adding them to my commonplace book! xxxxx
love that teddy’s bread pudding will comfort another kitchen. and oh how i love that we both have commonplace books…..our stashes of treasure. isn’t it an exquisite meditation on blossom……
xoxox