Peaches epitomize this golden time of year. They’re lush, juicy and colorful. And, of course, delicious.
I didn’t realize how much I loved them until we lost them one season a few years back. I have wiped the exact date from my memory because it is too depressing to contemplate. A sudden, sharp frost in the spring struck just as the peach trees bloomed — and the buds (and therefore the fruit) died.
This year, fortunately, peaches are in full fettle, bringing with them peach pie, peach crumble, peach cobbler, peach jam, peach ice cream and, best of all, succulent peaches to eat straight up.
On television one peach season, the host asked me how to select the best peaches at the supermarket. My answer was plain: Don’t select them at the supermarket.
We are lucky enough to have a number of orchards in our area. I prefer to patronize them. Not only do I get to support a local farmer by doing so, I also get the freshest peaches … and the best information about how to use them.
If one purchases peaches from their grower, one doesn’t have to worry about selecting the peaches. Some orchards sell peaches ready to eat on the spot. Some prefer to pick them a few days early so that they can ripen at home. In either case, one has ripe peaches in no time.
If I buy ready-to-eat peaches, I carefully refrigerate them in a single layer (piling them up can cause bruising), stem-side down, in my refrigerator, taking them out as needed and keeping an eye on them to make sure I eat them fairly quickly. I try to keep the peaches from touching each other.
If I buy not-quite-ripe peaches, I still refrigerate most of them in a single layer, but I take out a few at a time and place them on a tray at room temperature so they will ripen more quickly.
They would ripen even more quickly if I placed them in a brown paper bag. Unfortunately, when I place fruits in a brown paper bag I tend to forget about them and end up with an overripe mess. If you are more organized than I am, feel free to try this technique — but check the peaches frequently.
A friend recently asked me what to do about the juiciness of peaches in a pie. I found a recipe in the Washington Post that suggested combining the peaches with sugar, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt, letting them sit for at least 30 minutes, and then draining the liquid into a saucepan.
The writer then cooked the liquid until it was reduced to a syrup that was a third of the original juices in volume. She then recombined the syrup with the peaches and a little cornstarch and put the mixture in her pie shell.
I asked Becky Baxter Clark what she thought of this technique. Becky is an artist whose family has run Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield since 1915. She is also an accomplished baker. She prepares multiple pies every year and freezes them (before baking) in their pans.
Becky got right to the heart of the matter, telling me, “Boiling down juice seems like an extra chore, doesn’t it?”
She doesn’t mind a juicy pie and avoids overflowing juices by adding cornstarch to her pies, using a high-sided pie pan, and placing a pan below the pie (either right underneath or on a lower shelf) to catch drips.
Next year, I’ll get a peach recipe from Becky. This year, I’m contenting myself with the recipes below. If you make the peach sauce in advance (I always do), the chicken dish comes together in no time. The peaches and chipotle create a wonderful sweet-and-sour main course.
And the cobbler, a classic American dessert, is just peachy keen.
If you’d like to try a couple of my other peach recipes, stop at Apex Orchards on Sunday, Aug. 29. I’ll be serving nibbles and signing cookbooks at the farm store’s annual Peach Fest between noon and 2 p.m. Happy peach season!
Ingredients:
for the sauce:
2 cups peach slices
1½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 to 2 canned chipotles in adobo sauce (plus a little of the sauce from the can)
1 dab butter
For the chicken:
2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced in half horizontally to be thin and cook very quickly
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil as needed for sautéing
Half-recipe peach chipotle sauce (maybe a little less, but be generous)
chicken stock as needed to deglaze
Instructions:
First, prepare the sauce. (This is best done considerably in advance.) In a nonreactive pot (non-aluminum — i.e., stainless steel or enamel. It’s a pot that won’t react with the lemon juice), combine the fruit, 1 cup of the sugar, and the lemon juice. Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes to an hour (the shorter time is for very juicy peaches) to allow the peaches to juice up.
Cook the peaches over low heat until tender, stirring frequently. Add the remaining sugar, the salt, the chipotle, and the butter, and cook rapidly until thick, stirring frequently. Remove any foam you see. There shouldn’t be too much, thanks to the butter.
If you want jamlike consistency, the sauce will be ready when it sheets off a cold, stainless-steel spoon. If you don’t cook it that long, your sauce will be a bit more liquid, which is best for the chicken recipe below. In that case, a thermometer inserted into the sauce should measure about 215 degrees.
Let the sauce cool briefly, then pulverize it with a blender or immersion blender. Refrigerate the sauce until you are ready to use it. You will have about 2 cups. Leftover sauce is delicious with crackers and cream cheese.
To make the chicken, rub the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Sauté them in olive oil until golden. Spread some chipotle sauce over one side of the chicken, and cook for another minute or so; then turn the chicken over and repeat the process.
Remove the chicken pieces to a platter, and deglaze the peach goop from the pan with a little stock. Pour the resulting sauce over the chicken. Serve with rice or buttered noodles. Serves 4.
Ingredients:
For the peach base:
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
4 cups chopped peaches (or half peaches and half blueberries or raspberries)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter, diced
for the cobbler crust:
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
¼ cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
for the topping:
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 1½ quart casserole dish.
Begin by making the base. Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a smallish nonreactive pot. Stir in the fruit and lemon juice.
Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Boil, stirring gently, for 1 minute. Remove the fruit from the heat and stir in the cinnamon.
Spread the fruit in the prepared pan. Dot the top with butter.
To make the crust, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the butter, but don’t overdo the process. You should still have tiny pieces of butter in the mixture.
Whisk together the milk, egg, and vanilla. Add them to the dry ingredients, and mix just until moist. Drop the resulting mixture onto the peaches, and spread it around to cover the fruit. Sprinkle brown sugar over all in little clumps.
Bake until lightly browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Serves 6 to 8.
Tinky Weisblat is the award-winning author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook,” “Pulling Taffy,” and “Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb.” Visit her website TinkyCooks.com.