I found a recipe that I already had all the ingredients at home for except for one. Slivered almonds. That was do-able! I could easily pick up a small bag of those and be making these shortly! And that's what I did.
Blueberry-Nectarine Crisp
I've always liked the recipe websites that start out showing you all the ingredients in one place that you'll need. The recipe actually calls for 1 pint of blueberries and 2 nectarines, but I had twice that, so I doubled the recipe. More crisp!
Here are frozen blueberries (see the ones that look lighter than the others? That's the light frost from the freezer. Yum. Or not.) I'm going to mix them with the sliced (not peeled) nectarines, zest and juice from 1 lemon. The recipe calls for a Meyer lemon. The tree in my back yard is NOT a Meyer lemon tree. I used what I had. Remember, I had all of this on hand except the almonds.
When you make this, mix the fruit and juice together before adding the other ingredients, as I've done here. I didn't, but wished I had. I think it would've been better for all the fruit to have been coated with the juice before incorporating the other ingredients.
Here I mixed them all together and set them aside.
Now for the dry ingredients. Since I was doubling the wet ingredients I also doubled the dry ingredients. This half is waiting since my food processor is small. Turns out the bag of almonds I got was enough for 1 batch of crisp, not enough for the doubling I was doing. Oh well. Maybe I'll remember to pay attention to that sort of thing next time.
Here's the first batch in the food processor. Flour, oats, salt, almonds and cold butter.
Here's what each batch looked like after a spin in the food processor.
The original recipe calls for the fruit to be put in individual ramekins. I knew I had way more than would fit in ramekins, and I wanted a pan of the crisp, so I started to put the fruit in an 9x12 pan and realized it wasn't very thick, the fruit was quite spread out. This was not what I wanted, so I transferred it to a smaller 11x7 pan and started to crumble the topping over the fruit.
Here's what it looked like all covered, before going into the oven.
A side shot. You can see some of the topping has filled in the crevices around the fruit. Yum!
And voila! Out of the oven looking GBD!
Dessert that night was fantastic, despite the fact that I didn't do the sweetened mascarpone the recipe calls for! Although, admittedly, Cub didn't care for it. Not sweet enough for him (eye roll). Perhaps that had to do with my eagerness to make it and not waiting long enough for the nectarines to ripen. You'll wait long enough when you make it though, right? They should be soft and juicy. And my blueberries were old and frozen, not at their peak. *sigh* Oh well. I will triumph and make this again sometime. Or another crisp. I actually didn't need to double the topping recipe. I now have enough for another crisp. So there's that. I won't use every bowl and appliance in the kitchen next time around.
Enjoy!
Recipe courtesy of Anne Burrell at Food Network
Filling:
1 pint blueberries
2 large ripe nectarines, pitted and cut into thick slices
1/2 Meyer lemon, zested and juiced
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup tightly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
Pinch Kosher salt
Topping:
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into pea-sized pieces
1/2 cup almonds
Pinch Kosher salt
1 to 2 tablespoons cold water
1 cup mascarpone cheese
1 tablespoon sugar
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
For the filling: toss the blueberries and nectarines in a large bowl with the lemon zest and juice. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine. Divide the filling among 4 (6-ounce) ramekins.
For the topping: Combine all the ingredients in a food processor except the water. Pulse until combined, this will take about 30 seconds. Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is clumpy but crumbly.
Top each ramekin with the topping. Be sure to loosely sprinkle the topping and not pack it down. The idea is to look very crumbly and craggy.
Place the ramekins on a sheet tray and bake in the oven until the filling i hot and bubbly and the topping is brown and crispy, 20 to 25 minutes.
Sweeten the mascarpone with the sugar. Onto a small sheet pan or plate, neatly spoon 4 small portions of the sweetened mascarpone and chill until ready to serve.
Top each crisp with a quenelle of cold mascarpone. Serve the crisps warm.
Karin's Notes:
Next time I'll do the normal recipe size since no one in this house but me wants any and I guess I will use ramekins for easy portion control. I'll also use riper, fresher fruit. I'll also not completely cover the top of the fruit with the crumble mixture, allowing some of the fruit to peek through and bubble up. I'll start earlier in the day, too. I bumped right up against the time I needed to start dinner and felt rushed and hot. But, all in all I'm really pleased with this one!
My journey today was one of incredible mess but a really nice reward. I love summer fruit!
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