The Clafoutis: The easiest, bestest dessert going...

(and it's French!  Wow!)

I saw French chef Jacques Pepin whip up one of these on his PBS cooking show, and immediately wanted to make one myself. So I did. Now, I can't stop making them. Simple, savory, swift. What more do you want in a dessert?

Monsieur Pepin describes a clafoutis as being "somewhere between a sweet omelet and a custard." It's made with fruit (fresh or canned, but, of course, fresh is preferred), and the variations on the clafoutis theme are endless. So far, I've made one with peaches; another with cherries (the classic choice); and a third with pears and chocolate, and they've gotten progressively better. For simplicity's sake, I make mine in a 10"skillet that can go right from burner to oven, and I serve it, like Jacques, from the pan, cutting it into wedges like a pie. (You can use a fancy oval gratin dish or shallow pyrex baking dish or even a pie tin for that matter.)

Here's Chef Pepin's basic recipe (4 servings, unless you live with Mike) to get you started...

· 3 tablespoons unsalted butter  · 1 can (8.25 ounces) peach halves in syrup  · 1/4 cup all-purpose flour  · 4 large eggs  · 2 tablespoons sugar/splenda · 1/4 cup sour cream/ricotta   · 1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Melt the butter in medium nonstick skillet. Drain the peaches (you should have 6 to 8 peach halves), reserving ½ cup of the syrup. Using a whisk, mix the syrup with the flour in a medium bowl. Add the eggs, sugar, sour cream or ricotta, and 1 tablespoon of the melted butter from the skillet. Mix until you have a smooth batter. This is as easy as making pancakes.

Pour the batter into the butter remaining in the skillet and arrange the peach halves on top, spacing them evenly. Place the skillet over high heat for about 2 minutes and then transfer it to the oven. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until lightly browned and puffy. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the powered sugar on top. Cool to lukewarm.  Eat with whipped cream or ice cream or heavy cream or bare naked (IT, not you) for that matter...you get the idea.

After you make one, google Clafoutis and check out some other recipes. I have about 6-7 French cookbooks and out of curiosity, I opened each of them looking at their dessert recipes.  Virtually every book has at least one Clafoutis listed, and I'd never before noticed them.  How did that happen? A pity.  In any case, the other recipes are essentially the same as the one above but with variations in amounts of certain ingredients and additions of others like kirsch (cherry liqueur), vanilla extract, milk, whipping cream, chocolate, honey, slivered almonds, yogurt, and lots of other fruits such as apples and pineapple and apricots. Like with pancakes, once you know the basics, you can enhance and improve as you desire. Any way you go, it's hard to screw one of these things up (unless you inadvertently bite your lip while chewing in your haste to eat your wedge of clafoutis…I hate when that happens). wom