The other day, picking up our kid from nursery school, I was smacked by the smell of burning pancakes and boiled spinach. It was nothing new: nursery schools, like my late grandpa’s apartment, smell like a weird mixture of mismatched foods prepared by, well, children or, um, barely sighted old people. Pancakes, spinach turnovers, gluten-free carrot cake, nut-free granola, applesauce, smores, lentil-stuffed peppers.
Cooking is said to help kids learn. At home, we use it more as a way to keep him out of trouble. And so we attacked peach turnovers; a delicious dish but in retrospect not the most kid-friendly project.
This version, taken from a bunch of websites, is a bit more involved, in that the dough, a quick puff pastry, requires a series of folding and resting to work in the vast quantity of butter. Unfortunately, the longer a child is exposed to an ingredient, the more damage he can do, which is why I lost half the dough, stolen while my back was turned.
The not so happy ending was discovering a giant ball of raw puff pastry under my bed. The happy ending was a crispy, flaky turnover filled with hot fruit. And the warm smell of said pastry filling my senses. Until next day’s school pickup.
(Note: For a cleaner filling, we peeled the nectarines. The original recipe used apples, but it’s summer.)
Flaky Peach (or nectarine) Turnovers (via a blinding web of internet sources)
Makes about 20
For the dough: 1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (12 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into small
pieces
For the filling:
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 nectarines peeled, cored, and cut into small chunks
3 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into small bits
1 large egg, beaten with 1 teaspoon water, for egg wash
sugar, for dusting
To make the dough:
- Stir the sour cream and sugar together; set aside.
- Whisk the four and salt together in a large bowl, then toss the butter bits over the flour. Working with a pastry blender, two knives or your fingers, cut the butter into the ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Don’t worry about being thorough – it’s better to have an uneven mix than an overworked dough. Switch to a fork and, using a lifting and tossing motion, gently stir in the sour cream. The dough will be very soft.
- Divide the dough in half. Put each half in a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to shape each piece into a rectangle (don’t worry about size or precision). Wrap the dough and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour, or for up to 2 days.
- Remove one piece of dough from the fridge and roll it into a rectangle about 9 x 18 inches. The dough is easiest to work with if you roll it between sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap – if you want to roll it traditionally, make sure to flour the rolling surface. Fold the dough in thirds, like a business letter, wrap it and refrigerate it. Repeat with the second piece of dough, and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours or up to 1 day.
To make the filling:
1. Whisk the flour, sugar, and cinnamon together in a large bowl. Add the nectarines and toss to coat.
2.Getting ready to bake:
3. Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicon mats.
4. Roll out one piece of dough to a thickness of about 1/8 inch, and cut out 4 1/2 inch rounds with a large cutter or the edge of a tartlet pan. Repeat with the second piece of dough. If you’d like, you can gather the scraps together, chill them, and make additional turnovers. (The turnovers made from scraps will taste good, but they won’t be as pretty and light as the first rounders.) You’ll get 7 or 8 rounds from each piece of dough.
5. Place 1 to 2 tablespoons nectarines in the center of each round and dot with the butter. Moisten the edges of each round with a little water and fold the turnovers in half, sealing the edges by pressing them together with the tines of a for. Use the fork to poke steam holes in each turnover, and transfer the turnovers to the baking sheets. (At this point, the turnovers can be frozen; wrap them airtight when they are firm and store them for up to 2 months. Bake them without defrosting, adding a few minutes to their time in the oven)
6. Brush the tops of the turnovers with a little of the egg wash and sprinkle each one with a pinch of sugar. Bake for about 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back after 10 minutes. When done, the turnovers will be puffed, firm to the touch, and golden. Gently transfer them to racks and cool to room temperature.
