Summer on a plate

I made olive oil-maple granola this morning to top this peak-of-summer ripe peach. So good. 

Enjoyed it with iced oolong tea.

I started with this recipe maybe 14 years ago and have tweaked it along the way, initially swapping  walnuts instead of pecans and reducing the maple syrup to a half-cup (those are my standards now). Also standard: start with a teaspoon of Morton's kosher salt in the slurry. It's tempting to add more but I resist (most of the time). Today I considered adding Malden salt crystals to my bowl but held off. Salt and sweet is almost irresistible so I rein in that tendency early in the process.

Other experiments include reducing or omitting the oatmeal, adding hemp hearts, sesame seeds, almonds, or [salted] pistachios, reducing the brown sugar by a third (that maybe a new rule from today forward).

I'm always trying to find a way to make the granola clump so I can eat it out of hand. I've added egg white, used more slurry, varied the baking-stirring method. No satisfactory clumps yet, but it's always delicious.

This seems to be almost universally enjoyed. One year for a charity fundraiser, I sold a quart jar of granola for $20. It probably could/should have been more.

Here's a link to the original recipe: 

https://food52.com/recipes/15831-nekisia-davis-olive-oil-maple-granola