French Toast with Red-Wine Nectarines from Everyday Food Magazine, July/August 2009

As I'm sitting here looking at the beautiful nectarines in this picture, the only thing that's going through my mind is what my daughter's friend just told me. She's here for a play date and so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and make them French toast for breakfast. No, they didn't get the red-wine nectarines, but I did slice up an un-boozed fruit and put it in a bowl for the girls. After breakfast I asked why they hadn't touched the fruit. My daughter's friend looked at me and said, "Because I think peaches taste gross and my mom said that those taste just like peaches."

Hopefully as stunned as I felt inside didn't manage to fully come through in my face, but I think that's the first time I've found someone that doesn't like peaches or nectarines. I can understand those who don't like the fuzziness on the skin of the peach, but the fruit itself? I ate the whole bowl just to prove how good they were.

Martha Stewart was kind enough to include a breakfast in this magazine, the French Toast with Red-Wine Nectarines. Ok, it's really supposed to be a dessert and served with ice cream, but she does say that it can be made for breakfast too, which is why I used whipped cream and made a good hearty white bread yesterday. Don't think I'm all that industrious and Suzy-homemaker or anything; I used a bread machine.

This is one of the more simple French toast custards I've seen. It's just cream, eggs, sugar and a pinch of salt. Usually a recipe will include a spice like nutmeg or cinnamon, but I figured that since there was a red-wine sauce that's why she left it so plain. Plain must be ok because the girls ate their French toast with butter and syrup until they were stuffed and said it was very good.

The nectarines are also easy to make and while that part can come together while you're making the toast (like I did), I think it would work better if the wine was reduced beforehand and allowed to cool a little before serving so it thickened up more.

When I made the French toast for the girls, I allowed it to soak for a minute or so per the recipe's instructions. After that batch I realized that if I left all the bread in there that long there was no way I'd have enough custard to fully coat, let alone soak, all the slices so I settled for a good dunking instead for the last two servings. Even so, I was wiping the plate dry with the fourth slice. Maybe it's because the bread I used was bigger than Martha's but her recipe does not make enough for 6 slices of bread. In fact, to say that one slice of bread is a serving is definitely the count to use if this is a dessert, not breakfast.

Admittedly, the thought of having red wine anything at 9am wasn't all that appealing to me, but I took one for the team and ate the plateful in the picture anyhow. Oh my gosh. The nectarines in wine sauce is absolutely perfect. There's enough sweetness in the wine sauce that it really turns it into a delicate syrup that's perfect with the French toast. I didn't need the whipped cream (though I can see where this a dessert with ice cream would rock).