Peaches/Nectarines | Gourmandistan

Different flours shift peaches (but not flavor) of wonderfully variable cake

July 30, 2018 by Steve

We’ve run across many variations of Nigel Slater’s recipe for “midsummer cake,” and have used it many times with all sorts of fresh fruits. In Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard (that’s Tender: Vol. II to you Brits), the cake appears with apricots and raspberries. In a 2010 article, Slater employed peaches, blueberries and orange zest. We’ve done those, as well as our own delicious variation with Concord grapes during their ever so short season. The cake is incredibly easy […]

Categories: Baking, Cake, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Fruit Desserts, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes

Duck breast with peach sauce succeeds with substitute jam and sans thermometer

August 13, 2017 by Steve

We very much like duck breast in Gourmandistan, but we’re always a little leery when we cook it. Getting to that perfect stage, a bit beyond rare but before the liverish taste takes over, isn’t something we do with consistency. This method, originally paired with a black currant sauce, seems to work well even without a meat thermometer (which we have, but can never quite bring ourselves to trust). Alternating pan-searing with a quick trip to the oven, the breast […]

Categories: Cooking, Duck, Food, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes

Pre-Pearl Harbor peach preserves are historically delicious

July 13, 2016 by Steve

Michelle recently made two wise decisions: teach Steve how to make jam and get a monthly subscription to the newly-available online archives of our local newspaper, the Courier-Journal. Steve has pitted, chopped, sugared and boiled plums, cherries, peaches and (currently) wild blackberries, filling our freezer with an overflow of jam. With her newly-found spare time this fruit season, Michelle has perused old restaurant reviews, advertising and such, bemoaning the fact that this treasure trove wasn’t there when we were writing our book. (Yes, the […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Old cookbooks, Peaches/Nectarines, Vegetarian

Peach Ginger Rosemary Brown Betty makes brioche flop much better

August 2, 2015 by Steve

An anticipated bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich ended up as a Peach Brown Betty, and it really wasn’t a bad ending. It did begin somewhat sadly for Steve, who had fussed over his buttery brioche dough for two days before it all went wrong in the oven. What seemed to be a golden brown loaf revealed its still-raw core when the top fell off as Steve attempted to turn it onto a cooling rack. Putting the patched-together brioche back in the oven […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Vegetarian, Yeast breads

Peach curd takes precedence over citrus

September 5, 2013 by Steve

Gourmandistan has seen the last of summer for this year, unless some lovely reader wishes to spirit us away to the Southern Hemisphere. (We will be available for away-spiriting after mid-October.) Which means peach season has sadly passed us by, but not before we discovered a delicious new way to use them. After Michelle once again pointed out the many, many jars of jam in our freezer, Steve grudgingly admitted making peach jam wasn’t quite the necessity he believed it […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Nectarine peach chutney mostarda tautology redundancy

August 12, 2013 by Steve

Call this sweet, sassy, make-meat-more-savory sauce peach mostarda or nectarine chutney. Call it nectarine mostarda or peach chutney. Either way, you’ll quite possibly enjoy it as much as we have. Nectarines are to peaches as Channing Tatum is to Steve: basically the same thing, just without all the fuzz. (Steve acknowledges there may be additional differences between Channing Tatum and himself.) Indians and Italians may disagree, but some of their own authorities seem to think chutneys and mostardas are basically […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Vegetarian

A parching, painterly interruption leads to Peach Ice Cream Pie

July 29, 2012 by Steve

Horrifying heat is not good for ice cream. Neither, it seems, is it good for house painters. After weeks of weather-related delay, our house and kitchen were freshly painted and finally freed from painters. The outside, in its lovely new creamy white color, was baptized by a couple of non-drought-relieving nickel-sized hailstorms (thanks again, global weirding!). After restoring the cookbooks, WWII posters and various tchotchkes to our kitchen we were ready to once again bespatter its freshly painted walls with […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Peaches/Nectarines, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Baked peaches for a baking planet.

July 1, 2012 by Steve

A few of Steve’s “friends” (mostly the Facebook and “Fox & Friends” kind) might deny any existence of global climate change. Try as they might, though, they can’t deny it’s been horribly hot in Gourmandistani territory the past week or so. All-time heat records are being broken every day. The astonishing heat contributed to something called a “land hurricane” that swept through not too far from here, killing several and knocking out power to millions without any letup in temperature. […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Rice, Vegetarian

Peach Cobbler and Prejudice

June 21, 2012 by Steve

Gourmandistan prides itself on its inclusiveness and tolerance of all cultures and traditions, especially the edible ones. But xenophobia seems to be hard-wired into the human psyche, and even those of us who strive to be civilized may still retain traces of irrational antipathy towards certain groups. For Steve, this happens to be people from Indiana—something that did not help when a nascent Gourmandistan decamped to Indianapolis for about a year. Long, long ago in an advertising galaxy far, far, […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Old cookbooks, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Vegetarian