The thing about travelling to amazing places and spending all your time absorbing new sights and sounds and smells is that sometimes you get homesick. This past weekend, homesickness crept up and surprised me in the middle of a trip to the French countryside where the landscape was so beautiful it felt like we were walking through a painting: wide expanses of green fields and forests, medieval stone barns dotted throughout, rotting rose vines climbing 12 century churches, rolling hills of champagne vineyards, old wooden farm houses with crooked stairs, and a heavy fairytale fog. It happens; for reasons I cannot explain, the experience of true beauty – in life or art – often makes me feel sad and achey in my bones. But this was different. I was at the top of La Tour Cesar looking over the red rooftops of the medieval town of Provins when I suddenly thought that I would give it all up – all this beauty, all this wonderful experience – for a chance to be back in my old apartment in Vancouver with my old bed and my old house plants, listening to the sounds of the port to fall asleep. The memories made my stomach turn over and I thought I might cry in front of all my new road trip companions, but I didn’t. Instead I spent a good chunk of the next two hours chastising myself for feeling homesick. It felt like betrayal, like I wasn’t as grown up as I thought I was, or that I was ungrateful or overly sensitive or weak.

Now that I’m back in the city and thinking clearly in the absence of intense stimuli, I realize that it is perfectly normal to feel homesick when moving to a foreign country. Even Gertrude Stein, who lived in Paris for most of her adult life, was homesick for America sometimes! This I know because I brought Alice B. Toklas’s cookbook/memoir along with me for the trip, and as it turns out, most of her recipes are concerned with recreating American dishes in France for Gertrude, who missed American food. If I had been reading this book while still living in Canada, I would have thought it was crazy to prefer chicken pot pie to duck confit, but I think I get it now. After being turned away from the one restaurant in town, my road trip companions and I decided to make a feast in our Airbnb on Saturday night, each taking on a dish that we knew how to make well. By some miracle, I was assigned dessert, and so I found myself in an ancient farmhouse in the middle-of-nowhere France with a bunch of strangers (and Anthony) throwing together an apple crisp – a Grandma Tien standard – in an old French tart tin. It wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t French, and I didn’t even have the exact measurements on hand, but the act of baking that simple dish that reminded me so much of home, and then seeing people enjoy it fresh out of the oven, cured my homesickness. I suddenly understood the value of “comfort” food on a whole new level. And besides that, I realized how much I had changed from the girl of a few years ago who got most of her nutrition from frozen pizzas. I’m now someone whose emotional life depends on cooking, at least a little bit. Cooking, as Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and countless other writers and chefs have realized before me, is a way to travel – abroad or home. It’s kind of magical.

All this is to say that, after making that apple crisp in the countryside last weekend, I was inspired to make another one when we got back to Paris, but with different flavours: peach and basil. That’s the thing about crisps (or crumbles, according to some); the ingredients are probably already in your cupboard, they’re easy as sin to make, and they only benefit from improvisation! The perfect kind of recipe, in my opinion. The idea for a peach basil crisp comes courtesy of reddit, of course, where I got lost in a vortex of unique flavour pairings for stone fruit. But it’s also because peaches remind me of childhood trips to the Okanagan, where fruit stands selling fresh peaches and cherries lined the road. Growing up in Alberta, a ripe peach was a miracle to behold and so the mouth-feel memories of those BC peaches are still strong in me.

I don’t know about you, but I have never eaten peaches and basil together in the same dish. Now that I’ve tried it, I can’t believe I’ve lived 27 years without it. The basil makes the peaches taste like a whole new fruit. In this peach basil crisp, the basil is subtle, but game changing. The mascarpone adds a level of richness that just can’t be compared to regular whipped cream (although whipped cream or ice cream would be a fine substitute if you can’t get your hands on mascarpone). I opted for mascarpone as a topping because the basil was offering a savoury vibe and I knew the peaches were so ripe that the crisp would be hella sweet on its own. Mascarpone almost has the texture of cream cheese; when paired with basil, this crisp is almost a pizza. Weird? No, just very, very yummy.

This peach basil crisp is the perfect no-fuss, knock your socks off, post dinner on the balcony with a glass of chilled rosé summer dessert, whatever place in the world you’re currently inhabiting. I pretty much beg you to try it, especially if you’re a prairie person aching for some of those prairie skies and grandma home-cooked vibes. The directions I’ve laid out here are extremely flexible. At its heart, a crisp is just one layer of fruit topped with a layer of crumble. So don’t worry if you’re missing the exact right size of pan or number of peaches, etc.

You can eat now!

PS: Because it was dreamed up in the medieval countryside, where sheep actually still have shepherds, etc., I flirted with calling this peach basil crisp the “Pastoral Peach Crisp”. However, Google’s algorithms know better than me. You should call it the Pastoral Peach Crisp though, if you want.

PPS: The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

Peach Basil Crisp with Mascarpone 2016-06-08 10:47:10 Serves 6 Write a review Save Recipe Print Prep Time 30 min Cook Time 30 min Total Time 1 hr Prep Time 30 min Cook Time 30 min Total Time 1 hr Filling 8 peaches 2 tbsp fresh basil zest of 2 small lemons 2 tablespoons granulated sugar couple pinches of coarse salt Crisp 2/3 cup oats 2/3 cup slivered almonds 2/3 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp flour 6 tbsp cold butter mascarpone or whipped cream (for serving) Instructions Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. For the filling Wash and slice peaches lengthwise. Assemble peaches evenly in a 10-inch tart pan. Sprinkle sugar, lemon zest, salt and basil (tear the leaves if they are too large) over the peaches. For the crisp Combine all ingredients (except mascarpone) in a large bowl, rubbing the butter in with your fingers until mixture is crumbly. Crumble over top of the peaches. Bake until mixture is bubbling and topping is golden brown, about 30 minutes. Best served immediately, but also good chilled. Notes Peach basil crisp can stay in the fridge for up to 3 days, covered, without getting too soggy. If it's anything like the rhubarb or apple crisps I am used to eating, you should be able to freeze peach basil crisp for a really long time. Don't worry too much if the peaches leak a lot of liquid at the bottom of the dish during the cooking process. It tastes almost like syrup if you spoon it on top of individual portions. Alternatively, it also seems to go away after a day in the fridge. This peach basil crisp can easily be made gluten-free by subbing regular oats for gluten free oats and flour for almond flour (or just an entire crust of slivered almonds) or vegan by omitting the mascarpone and subbing butter for some cold coconut oil. You Can Eat Now http://www.youcaneatnow.com/

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