Edition: U.S. / Global

THE CHEF; A Sweetness Beyond Nature

By Tom Colicchio
Published: August 29, 2001

IN the 1980's, I tried roasting just about everything. It was an experimental phase. I liked the way roasting concentrated flavors and deepened colors, and the nice touch of browning it added around the edges. I even tried roasting a whole head of cabbage.

Well, I don't do that anymore. But I still love what roasting does to ripe summer fruit. It may seem greedy to improve on nature now, but that is exactly what roasting does.

With roasted fruits, you can go in lots of directions. They're delicious on their own for dessert, just touched with some ice cream or crème fraîche and maybe a shortbread cookie on the side. And they can become part of a more elaborate dessert, as a filling or a topping: for crepes, pain perdu, in a tart shell with some pastry cream.

When you bake a bread pudding with roasted fruit in the bottom of the ramekin or baking dish, and then unmold it, you have something that's almost like a tarte Tatin, with the caramelized fruit on top.

With roasted fruit, instead of the usual raw slices that go into the pan, you've already baked off the excess moisture so you wind up with fruit that has much richer flavor and texture. Roasting does wonders for fruit that's not dead ripe.

Almost any fruit, except berries or citrus, can be roasted, and soon I'll be thinking about pineapple, pears, apples, mangoes and bananas. But right now, my pastry chef, Karen DeMasco, and I are reveling in the seasonal stone fruits like peaches, apricots, nectarines and plums. We prefer yellow peaches to white. It's hard to get a good white peach, and besides, I think the yellow ones have better acidity.

You have to select fruit that's ripe but still firm. When it's soft there's too much water, and your fruit winds up steaming instead of really roasting. Having caramelized sugar in the pan enriches the flavor and makes a great sauce. It's much better than anything chocolate.

Karen makes some caramel first, just with sugar, no water in the pan, but with a little light corn syrup to prevent the sugar from crystallizing. Lots of recipes call for cooking sugar with water to make caramel, but it's really not necessary: all you wind up doing is evaporating the water before the sugar can caramelize. It may be a little trickier without the water, but either way you have to watch it closely, so what difference does it make?

When the caramel is a medium amber, we put the halves of fruit in the pan, with the cut side down. A sprig or two of an herb -- lavender with peaches, lemon verbena with plums, lemon thyme with apricots, even some basil or rosemary -- add a beautiful fragrance. Then the pan goes into the oven.

We turn the fruit over halfway through the roasting. The entire process takes only a few minutes. But come to think of it, it's really just like braising, starting the cooking on top of the stove, then putting the pan in the oven. When the fruit comes out, you can just lift off the skins if you prefer. I love the skin, the way it's candied and gets crispy as it cools. Sometimes we sliver it and serve it as a garnish for the ice cream.

You can just spoon the caramel out of the pan to use as a sauce, but we like to give it a nice finish, with a bit of butter and cream stirred in at the end. As with any braised dish, you can add other ingredients to the pan, nuts, for example, or raisins.

In the restaurant we roast the fruit partway and finish it when an order comes in. You don't have to do that at home, but it's very easy to make the fruit in advance and warm it in the oven a few minutes before serving. It's always more delicious warm.

You can also use roasted fruit with savory dishes, alongside foie gras, pork, duck or even fish. Then, instead of making the fruit just sweet, I would add spices like cardamom, and some acid -- a little vinegar, for example -- or the tart concentrated grape syrup called saba, and a touch of salt, so it becomes more like a sweet-and-sour relish. When I roast figs, I like to wrap them in pancetta first. I serve them as a first course with some arugula and Parmesan. They're also good as a side dish with roast duck. Try roasted pears, made with some honey in the caramel, with cheese.

For bread puddings, Karen coats the bottoms of the ramekins with caramel, puts in the fruit and then cubes of brioche that have been soaked in a custard base. It's so simple. She doesn't actually cook the custard because that happens as the pudding bakes. And we bake the puddings in a water bath because they're more delicate that way, and less eggy.

It's just a cut above something we sometimes serve our staff for family meals, taking leftover roasted fruit and hunks of brioche and heating them up together in a baking pan. If you've got some roasted fruit on hand, you could just do that, too, and if you dress it up with a sprig of herb and put some ice cream with it, your family or your dinner guests will be very, very happy.


Time: 30 minutes

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

4 ripe but firm large yellow peaches, halved and pitted (8 firm apricots, 8 firm Italian prune plums, 4 firm nectarines or 4 large, firm Pluot plums may be substituted)

4 sprigs fresh lavender, basil, lemon verbena or mint

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1/3 tablespoon heavy cream

Vanilla ice cream for serving (optional).

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place sugar in 10-inch nonstick ovenproof skillet. Drizzle with syrup. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until mixture liquefies. Continue cooking until mixture is light caramel color.

2. Place fruit in pan, the cut side down. Top with herbs. Place in oven and bake 5 minutes, until caramel has darkened and fruit is tender but still holds its shape. Use spatula to turn fruit cut side up, return to oven and roast another 3 to 5 minutes, until edges of fruit have browned. Do not cook long enough for fruit to collapse.


4. Place pan on top of stove, and swirl in butter. Cook a few seconds over low heat. Whisk in cream to make caramel sauce. Pour sauce over and around fruit, and serve warm, with ice cream on the side if desired.

Yield: 4 servings.


Time: 1 hour

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

8 roasted peach, nectarine or Pluot halves, or 16 roasted apricot or plum halves (see recipe), caramel sauce reserved

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 vanilla bean, split

5 cups crustless brioche in small cubes.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly butter 8 1-cup ovenproof ramekins, and dust with a little sugar.

2. Place 5 tablespoons sugar in a small nonstick skillet. Drizzle with syrup. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until mixture liquefies. Continue cooking until mixture turns into caramel. Pour caramel into ramekins to coat bottoms.

3. Cut roasted fruit in thick slices, and arrange in bottoms of ramekins.

4. Whisk eggs, egg yolk and remaining sugar in a large bowl. Place cream and milk in a saucepan with vanilla bean, and heat until beginning to bubble around edges. Do not allow to boil. Slowly whisk hot liquid into egg mixture. Add brioche cubes, lightly pressing with back of spoon so they become saturated. Remove vanilla bean. Spoon the soaked brioche into ramekins.

5. Place ramekins in a large baking pan. Add hot water until it comes halfway up sides. Place in oven, and bake until tops of puddings are lightly browned and crusty, about 40 minutes.

6. Run a sharp knife around edges, and unmold puddings onto individual plates. Gently reheat caramel sauce reserved from roasted fruit, whisking, until just warm. Pour around puddings and serve.

Yield: 8 servings.

Photo: CARAMELIZED -- Roasted peaches and bread pudding. (Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times)(pg. F1) Drawing (Martie Holmer)(pg. F5)