Stir It Up!

Just peachy and creamy

By Mar­i­al­isa Calta

This is the sum­mer to try a peach. Suc­cu­lent, sweet, juicy peaches are in abun­dance, thanks in part (accord­ing to some news reports) to the drought that has hit many peach-growing parts of the coun­try. Exces­sive rain, one grower told a TV reporter, makes the peaches watery and less sweet; dry con­di­tions leave them smaller but tastier.

What to do with all those peaches? The obvi­ous answer: eat them. “Peaches and cream” is not just a flat­ter­ing descrip­tion for a woman’s com­plex­ion; it’s a recipe for dessert! Driz­zle sliced peaches with a bit of light or heavy cream, or creme fraiche, and you have a heav­enly dessert. Pair peaches with lus­cious Greek yogurt. Make peach shortcake.

Peaches, accord­ing to “The Oxford Com­pan­ion to Food,” are an ancient fruit that orig­i­nated in China and became so pop­u­lar they trav­eled the world. Per­sians claimed them as “Per­sian apples,” and by the time of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, even peo­ple in the United States thought they were native to this country.

Alan David­son, edi­tor of the “Oxford Com­pan­ion,” writes that peaches are the most cel­e­brated fruit in lit­er­a­ture, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of the cherry. The Greek philoso­pher Theophras­tus wrote about peaches, as did Pliny, Vir­gil, Emile Zola, T.S. Eliot and Mark Twain. Zola, appar­ently, was the orig­i­na­tor of the “peaches and cream” descrip­tion; he likened the com­plex­ions of the girls of south­ern France to that country’s famous Mon­treuil peaches.

Renoir and Picasso loved to paint this sen­sual fruit. When leg­endary French chef Auguste Escoffier wanted to honor soprano Nel­lie Melba, he did it with peaches (and gave us peach Melba to enjoy ever after).

One of my favorite ways to enjoy peaches and cream is in home­made ice cream. The recipe below can’t be beat.

PEACH ICE CREAM

Yield: 6 cups, or 12 servings

3 large egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups heavy (whip­ping) cream

1/2 cup whole milk

5 medium peaches (1 3/4 to 2 pounds)

1 tea­spoon almond extract

Juice of half a lemon

Fresh rasp­ber­ries or sliced peaches, for serv­ing (optional)

In a medium bowl, whisk together egg yolks and 1/2 cup of the sugar. Set aside.

Fill a large bowl halfway with ice and cold water. Set out a smaller bowl (with a min­i­mum capac­ity of 2 quarts) that will fit inside the larger bowl.

In the top of a dou­ble boiler set over sim­mer­ing water, heat the cream and milk until bub­bles just begin to form on the sur­face. Do not let the mix­ture boil.

Add about 1/2 cup of the hot cream to the egg yolk mix­ture and whisk briskly to com­bine. Stir yolk mix­ture into the remain­ing cream in the dou­ble boiler and whisk well. Cook over sim­mer­ing water, stir­ring con­stantly with a stain­less steel or wooden spoon, until the mix­ture thick­ens slightly and coats the back of the spoon, about 5 min­utes. Remove from the heat and pour into the smaller bowl that you have set out. Place this bowl into the pre­pared ice-water bath. Stir gen­tly to cool the mixture.

When the ice cream base is cooled to room tem­per­a­ture, cover and refrig­er­ate until thor­oughly chilled, at least 2 hours or overnight (recommended).

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Mean­while, use a sharp par­ing knife to cut an X in the bot­tom of the skin of each peach. Work­ing in batches, plunge the peaches into the boil­ing water for 1 to 2 min­utes, remove with a slot­ted spoon and, when cool enough to han­dle, slip off the peels. Cut the peaches in half, remove and dis­card the pits, and cut the flesh into 1/4-inch pieces. You should have about 2 cups of fruit.

Sprin­kle the peaches with the remain­ing 1/4 cup of sugar, the almond extract and lemon juice. Let the peaches sit at least 30 min­utes at room tem­per­a­ture for the fla­vors to blend.

Puree half of the peaches in the bowl of a food proces­sor or in a blender. Stir the peach puree into the chilled ice cream base. Then stir in the remain­ing cup of peach chunks.

Freeze the mix­ture in an ice cream maker fol­low­ing the manufacturer’s instruc­tions. You can serve it imme­di­ately, or pack it into an air­tight plas­tic con­tainer and freeze until firm, 3 to 4 hours. It will keep for sev­eral weeks in the freezer.

Serve with sliced peaches or rasp­ber­ries, if desired.

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Aug 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.