It’s summer again.
Every summer I glut myself on fresh fruit. Sure, most of them are available year round now that fruit gets shipped in in refrigerated canisters. It’s not the same. A local peach has rested on the tree longer, is generally an older hybrid and hasn’t had all the delicacy of its fruit bred out for cosmetic value and travel hardiness. They aren’t picked green and left to ripen in borrowed ethylene.
Nope. I’ve had fuzzy local peaches so sweet and plump that I’ve chased the juice running down my arm with my mouth, reluctant to lose a single drop. In the summer, I’ve been known to eat five peaches in a sitting, peeling them with my fingers and eating the skin, or pulling them in half with my hands and piling up the stones to keep count. I seriously adore peaches. They share favorite fruit space with cherries (and are oddly enough almost as good for innuendo).
It’s still a little early for the truly stunning local peaches to arrive in my local markets and farmers’ markets. Nonetheless, peaches from no further away than Georgia are starting to roll into the supermarket in large displays that fairly scream summer. More than ice cream, more than sunglasses and the beach, the fruit displays are the best gauge of the season.
I prefer to eat peaches when they are perfectly ripe and juicy, but once in a while their incredible sweet/tart flavor and fragrance begs for a place in something else. So, let me tell you about the cake I made the other day. It was two layers of white chocolate cake. The middle was filled with homemade peach jam, flavored with vanilla and almond. The cake was topped with a 1/8 inch thick round of almond paste, and the frosting was flavored with cognac and a little bit of apricot essence. It turned out very well. I had about a half cup of the jam left over, though. Over the last two days, I’ve had it on bread and over chocolate ice cream, and I’ve stirred it into yogurt. It’d probably be a lovely glaze for ham, but I really can’t imagine being able to keep it around long enough to be ham weather again.
So, basically this long windup is so I can give you a peach jam recipe. It’s not enough to can, although you could multiply. I added a bit of apricot essence to make it a little more assertive for the cake, but it doesn’t need it as a jam. And if the peaches had been really wonderful local peaches, I wouldn’t have added the essence anyway. The essence is thick, brown, fragrant and syrupy sweet/tart. It’s steam extracted from ripe fruit and generally only available in specialty stores. Don’t use anything made with alcohol, or for incidental candy making, it will only add an artificial flavor to your jam.
Peach Jam
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Ingredients: Makes about 2 cups
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4 cups peaches, peeled, with the stones removed, and chopped (about 5 large peaches)
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about 1/4 c. sugar (more or less)
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1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
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1-2 tsp almond extract (optional)
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1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
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1/2-1 tsp apricot or peach essence (optional)
To peel the peaches, blanch the whole fruits in a large pot of boiling water for one minute, then fish them out and let them cool enough to handle. They should be easy to peel after this treatment, but sometimes peaches are reluctant to perform, at which point, you’ll need to help out with a paring knife. Once they are naked, remove the stones and chop them up.
Cook the peaches in a heavy bottomed saucepan at a low simmer, stirring occasionally. Stir more frequently if it appears to be sticking unduly, although a little caramelizing is to be expected. Cook until reduced by about half, and deep in color. Add the lemon juice and taste the mixture. If it’s too tart, add a little sugar, no more than 2 tbsp. Stir and cook for a little while and then taste again. It should still be tart, even assertively tart, but not unpleasantly so. Add more sugar if necessary to get it to your tastes, but keep in mind what you’ll be using it for. I kept mine a bit extra tart because I like it that way, but also as a foil for the very sweet cake and frosting. For eating with yogurt, most people would probably like it a bit sweeter.
Cook it down a bit more until it is very thick. No juices will pool at all when you stir it. Remove it from the heat and stir in any of the optional ingredients. I like the almond flavor to be strong, but that’s another personal preference. In lieu of any of these, you could add 1-2 tbsp of amaretto liqueur, brandy, or rum. Mix well and then immediately place in a jar, cover tightly and let cool.
Let it rest overnight at room temperature to permit the assorted optional ingredients to mellow. Then, slather it over your toast or swirl it into your yogurt, or hide in your room and eat it with a spoon.
Keep it refrigerated unless you can it. And once you open a jar, keep it refrigerated. It should stay good for several weeks, if you can keep your hands off of it.