From soil to belly

A full harvest of peaches has come to us. They came from Connecticut where they have been growing this season at the Husband's family's homestead. The tree was planted originally to enjoy the spring flower blossoms. Now, five years later, it is yielding fruit.

Tante LoLo, as the Rutabaga calls her, brought us the harvest from one full peach tree. This is as close as I get to full circle. I know where the fruit grew this season and how it was taken care of.  The full harvest from one tree was kept together and brought to my house. Then we turned this abundance into jam. For the last couple mornings the whole family has enjoyed eating the jam with breakfast.

We made two different peach jam recipes. The first was a simple peach jam using Pomona's pectin.

Ingredients:
4 cups mashed peaches
1/4 c lemon juice
2 cups sugar
3t Pomona's pectin and 4t calcium water
Follow the link above for the rest of the canning recipe.

The jam was delicious and straight peach. It was a little overly sweet from the sugar, and next time I'd try maybe 1 1/2 cups.

The second recipe we made was Maple Vanilla Peach Jam from Preserving with Pomona's Pectin. This jam was delightful. I don't know that I had ever actually cooked with a real vanilla bean before. (I usually skip over the recipes that call for them.) But this time we decided to go for it. Hand-tended peaches deserved the best. Real vanilla bean has an exotic, yet comfortably familiar, flavor to it. This recipe also used maple syrup instead of sugar for the sweetener. I preferred it because the taste was sweet without being cloying.

Here are Tante LoLo and I with our yield, minus the jars that were already consumed for breakfast and a bag of peaches still ripening in my kitchen.

The postscript is that they brought us a peach tree which we planted in our yard yesterday. In a couple years, hopefully, we too will have peaches to harvest.

What to preserve right now?

This question was posed by a reader earlier this week:

... I am also wondering if you have any thoughts about what summer veggies

 I should stock in a freezer now before they become scarce? 

and how would I best preserve them? The parsley suggestion (earlier post) 

is a great one, does that work with other herbs? Like basil?

This is a great question! I thought about three criteria in shaping my answer:

Peach Sorbet 2

For our next sorbet experiment we tried replacing the brandy with corn syrup. We expected this to effect the sweetness and mouth feel.

Ingredients:

2 cups pureed strained peaches

1/2 cup 1:1 simple syrup

1/4 light corn syrup

For recipe instructions see: Tipsy Peach Sorbet, substitute corn syrup for brandy.

Tasting notes: This batch was actually quite delicious. The best compliment so far has been that "it tastes like a bite of summer." I'm curious in the next batch to keep experimenting with the mouth feel of the sorbet, as it's still a bit icy.

Tipsy Peach Sorbet

Applying the scientific method to my sorbet recipes is turning out to be quite fun. It's taking my natural inclination to tinker with a recipe and applying rigor to it. First up was peach sorbet. From my initial review of sorbet recipes I gleaned that the key components were:

• The pureed fruit
• Simple syrup, the ratio of sugar to water varies across recipes
• Anti-freezing agent: either alcohol or corn syrup

Here's the recipe we tried for our first experiment together:

Peach Sorbet

2 cups pureed strained peaches (About 16 medium size peaches)

1/2 cup 1:1 simple syrup

2 T peach brandy

To puree the peaches: Boil a pot of water. Plunge the peaches in the boiling water for 1 minute. Remove peaches from the boiling water and plunge into a bowl of ice water.

Remove the skins, which should now slip off easily. Chop the peach and put the peach pieces into a food processor, like a Cuisnart. Blend the fruit until it is pureed. Strain the fruit through a mesh sieve to remove any pulp. Measure out 2 cups of pureed strained fruit. Use any remaining puree for another purpose. Set aside.

To make the Simple Syrup: Put one cup of water in a pot. Bring to a boil. Add one cup of sugar. Stir until dissolved. Keep on the heat for 30 seconds, then remove.

We actually made three iterations of simple syrup, each with increasingly less sugar. The first was 1 cup water to 1 cup sugar. The second was 1 cup water to 1/2 cup sugar. The third was 1 cup water to 1/4 cup sugar. For the peach sorbet, we went with the 1:1 ratio but used only 1/2 a cup of it. The other syrups went into the fridge to await future gigs.

To make the peach sorbet: Combine the pureed peaches, simple syrup and peach brandy in a freezer-proof bowl. Place the mixture in the fridge until it is cooled. Once cooled, remove from the fridge and pour the mixture into your ice cream maker. Follow the instructions of your ice cream maker. For ours, which is a KitchenAid attachment, I blend it for 11 minutes. Then put the mixture back in the bowl, cover it, and put it in the freezer. Allow the sorbet to "ripen" for at least 4 hours. 

Tasting notes: The levels of sweetness and peachiness were perfect. I personally didn't like the taste of the brandy. The brandy was not subtle, and this could be a cousin of our holiday Sweet Potato Tipsy. I'm curious to try the corn syrup in replacement of the brandy in the next iteration. The Husband thought it was delicious already.

Peach Pineapple Basil Salsa

This weekend I felt like we needed some new flavor combinations on our plates. This led to improvising off a Peach Salsa recipe. My incarnation became Peach Pineapple Basil Salsa. It was delicious as part of fish tacos, which included grilled mahi mahi, rice pilaf, all rolled into a warm tortilla.

Peach Pineapple Basil Salsa Recipe:

5 medium size peaches
1/3 of a pineapple (or a slice of the pineapple that is about 4 fingers wide)
1 thin slice of red onion
1/2 cup cucumber (about half a cucumber)
10 cherry tomatoes

1/2 a lime

6 basil leaves

2 t jalapeno pepper (add more if you want it hotter)
Salt and pepper

Peel and cut the peaches, pineapple, red onion, and cucumber into bite size pieces. Put these four ingredients in a medium size bowl. Slice the cherry tomatoes into quarters, add to the bowl with the other ingredients. Juice the half of lime, and add to bowl. Cut basil leaves thinly with scissors, add to bowl. Dice the jalapeno and add to taste. Season with salt and pepper. Mix until combined. Can be made up to a day ahead of time.