Instructions

1. Use peaches that smell strongly at the stem and mangoes that give under your thumb. Both fruits are bland and fibrous when underripe, and there is not enough sweetener here to make up the difference.
2. Puree the peaches, mangoes, honey, lemon juice and cornflour to the consistency of apple sauce. Leave a little texture rather than whipping it smooth — air beaten in becomes holes in the sheet.
3. Bring the puree to a boil in a small pan, then drop it to a simmer for two minutes, stirring the whole time. This is what activates the cornflour; skip it and the starch stays raw and chalky and the leather stays runny.
4. Take it off the heat and let it cool to lukewarm before it goes near a tray. Hot puree poured onto a drying sheet steams and lifts the sheet away from the tray.
5. Pour about a cup per leather onto a solid drying sheet and rock the tray gently until the surface settles flat. An uneven pour is what gives you a leather that is crisp at one end and wet at the other.
6. Dehydrate at 52 °C for 11 hours, and judge it by whether the sheet releases cleanly from the liner rather than by the clock alone. If it stretches as you lift a corner, it needs longer.
7. Peel the leathers off and lay them on the mesh rack for a further 3 hours at the same setting. This second stage dries the underside, which has spent the whole first run sealed against a solid sheet and is always the damper face.
8. Roll each leather in baking paper once it is cool and keep the rolls in an airtight jar. They hold a month at room temperature and six in the freezer; the honey makes them slightly tacky, so store them rolled rather than stacked flat.