I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Perhaps I'm weird, but I rather enjoy going on holiday and spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen. When the holiday is in the French countryside, it is even more fun, since I get to go the markets and see what the local produce is like. While the village we were staying at had no market, there were enough markets within a twenty minute drive that we could get to one every day of the week except Thursday if we wanted to. We didn't want to, since there were chateaux to see, but I still managed to get to quite a few and indulge my craving for fruit, vegetables, charcuterie and cheese - cheese! I could rhapsodize about the cheese for quite some time, but I won't. Instead, I'll talk about fruit.

We had fruit and it was lovely. What we didn't have was dessert. Well, that's not strictly speaking true, since the bakeries provided us with tarts and pastries, but still, I was making entrees, and we were having salads and cheese (did I mention the cheese?), and I wanted to be able to provide a little dessert. Pastry is tricky to make on holiday in an alien kitchen, cakes would be easier, but can be a bit heavy and, frankly, boring. Enter the clafoutis.

Essentially, a clafoutis is fruit, surrounded by an eggy batter, baked and devoured. While in France, I made three or four with peaches (like the one heading this article), but upon my return, what I had was apples from my CSA, so I made apple clafoutis. Both were good.

• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup flour
• some fruit, two small or one large apple; the same in peaches; or an equivalent amount of something else
• a few tablespoons of brandy, calvados or a liqueur of your choosing, if so desired
• a bit of butter and a touch more sugar to coat the baking dish

Preheat the oven to 415F. Lightly butter a baking dish and sprinkle a bit of sugar to coat the inside.

Lightly beat the eggs, add the sugar and beat a bit more. Add the cream and combine well. Then add the flour slowly, in little bits, and mix until smooth. If you've soaked your fruit, drain it and add the liquid to the batter and mix it in.

Arrange your fruit in your dish to your desired level of prissiness. I usually go for pretty prissy. Pour the batter gently on top, then pop it into the oven. Twenty-five minutes should be about right. Ideally, it's a little browned and if you test it with a knife in the center, it should come out clean.

It's good warm or cold, by itself or with vanilla ice-cream, whipped cream, or sweetened cream.

The basic formula of 3 eggs, 1/4 cup each of sugar and cream, and 1/2 flour is what I use for my clafoutis, and it gives a pretty eggy result. If you prefer them less eggy, you could use two eggs and maybe add a bit more cream and flour. You could also substitute milk for some or all of the cream, if you wanted. I have tried adding yogurt or crème fraîche as well, and it's good, but it doesn't set up as nicely.