On my trip to the Mt. Pleasant farmer’s market on Saturday, I bought a small wooden crate of voluptuous, rosy peaches.  It was the end of July, and they are exploding with sweetness and juice and are just begging to be cooked, sliced, baked, and eaten as quickly as possible.  Pleasant Pops was selling peach ginger popsicles, and I was entranced with the marriage of those sweet and spicy flavors.

I found a recipe for a gingered peach and blackberry pandowdy in this lovely fruit dessert cookbook from bakers out of Portland.  Unfortunately, the blackberries I’d tasted this year weren’t up to snuff, and the flavor of the peaches was so extraordinary that I didn’t think they needed any help from any additional ingredients anyway.  I wanted to taste the pure, unadulterated magic of summer peaches and sparkling ginger in my mouth.  This recipe is that good.

adapted from by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson:

ginger peach pandowdy

1 T unsalted butter, at room temp, for greasing dish
6 peaches, pitted
1/2 cup sugar
juice of 1 lemon
2 T cornstarch
2 T chopped candied ginger
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t fine sea salt

recipe for all-butter pastry (see below)

Preheat oven to 425. Butter a 9-inch pie pan, or better yet, use a cast-iron skillet or colorful le creuset dish for added color and depth.

Wash the peaches, pierce skin all over with a fork, and slice each peach into 10-12 slices.  Put the peaches in a bowl, add the sugar and lemon juice, and toss gently until evently coated.  Set aside for 15-20 minutes to draw out some of the juices.

Strain the peach juice into a small saucepan over medium heat.  Cook, stirring occassionally, until reduced by half.  Rub the cornstarch, candied ginger, ground ginger, and salt together in a bowl.

Roll the pie pastry out a little larger than the diameter of your pan.  Cut to size.  You will probably have extra pastry; wrap in plastic wrap and save in the refrigerator for another dessert.

Add the cornstarch mixture and reduced juice to the peaches and stir gently to combine.  Pour into the prepared pan and top with the pastry.  If the crust is a bit larger than the pan, tuck it inside the pan.  Place the pie on a baking sheet to collect any drips.

Bake for 50 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the fruit is bubbling.  (Mine took only 40 minutes in the oven, so trust your nose!  When the pie smells fragrant, check to see if the crust is dark golden.)  Cool for 1 hour before serving.

all-butter pastry

The trick to making flaky, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth pie crust is to keep the ingredients as cold as possible, and work the dough as quickly as possible to prevent it from warming up.  This allows the butter to melt in the oven, leaving behind pockets of air that produce light, flaky pastry.  This goal can be tough to achieve in midsummer, midcity, in a kitchen with no AC, but go for it anyway.

Makes one 9-inch pie shell

4 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
less than 1 T sugar
¼ t. fine sea salt
½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter
¼ cup ice water, or more as needed
½ T freshly squeezed lemon juice

Pour the flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl, stir to combine, then put the bowl in the freezer for about 10 minutes, until very cold.

Cut the butter into 1-inch cubes, then add it to the flower mixture and toss to evenly coat.  Cut the butter into the flour mixture using a food processor or your fingers.  If choosing the latter, rub the cubes of butter between your thumbs and two forefingers, producing thin flakes of cold butter scattered throughout the dough.  Once the butter starts breaking up into these flakes, the dough should start looking shaggy.  If the butter starts melting too much and the dough is getting greasy, stick the bowl into the freezer for 10 minutes to cool down.  Work until the mixture becomes coarse and crumbly and the butter is about the size of peas.

Stir the water and lemon juice together, then drizzle over the dry ingredients a little at a time.  Toss with a fork to distribute the liquid.  The pastry will be shaggy but should hold together when squeezed in the palm of your hand.  If not, add an additional few drops of water.

Dump the pastry onto a lightly floured work surface and press down on the dough, folding it over on itself a few times until it holds together.  Try not to handle it too much.  Shape it into a disk 1 inch thick and wrap in plastic wrap.  Chill for an hour.

Roll out pastry on a lightly floured surface with a floured rolling pin.  If you don’t have a rolling pin, you can substitute an empty wine bottle.  Begin from the center of the dough and roll outwards, flipping the dough carefully and re-dusting the surface with flour to roll the dough on the opposite side.  Continue to work from the center of the dough outwards, until the dough is of uniform thickness (thin, but not so thin that the dough becomes transparent and starts to tear).  If the dough does tear, no problem.  For this humble pandowdy, top with the pie crust and patch up any holes with a bit of dough.

Although not necessary, I like to cut a small x on the top of the pandowdy to release additional gases and peach juices, and because of course, that little x makes the entire pie look so darn adorable.