Peach be with you
Everybody has their favorite fruit, the one they’d happily eat for the rest of their lives even if they could have no other.
Mine, historically and famously in my family, has been the orange. We couldn’t keep enough in our West Texas house when I was a kid, because I would eat so many in a day that my older siblings would tease me that my skin was starting to look like it would peel off in thick pieces, leaving white pith underneath.
That was before peaches.
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When did they take over the orange’s place in my heart and mind and mouth, on my juice-dripping hands and arms and shirt and face?
I can’t tell you exactly, but maybe they were always there, in my blood, waiting for their day, because I was born in Georgia, whose peach fame is well deserved.
What I can tell you is that when The Husband and I moved into our big old classic American Foursquare almost a decade ago, the first tree I wanted to plant was peach. I chose Contender variety, buying it from the excellent Edible Landscaping in Virginia. I got a few good years out of it (and a couple of bountiful harvests) before it succumbed to disease and bowed out. (It coulda been a Contender!) And I was too sad to plant another peach tree, instead replacing it with an apricot tree just this past spring and enjoying the super-productive plum tree I put in as a peach companion.
So I scout for peaches at the farmers markets. This year, the harvest has been meager at best, thanks to a late killing frost, but I’m lucky to have access to markets that draw farmers from at least five states, increasing the odds that somebody, somewhere managed to grow my favorite fruit.
A couple weeks ago, as I was preparing for my most recent Zoom cooking class, on maximizing summer produce, I found lovely peaches at the Gateway Farmers Market on the border of Brentwood and Mount Rainier, Maryland, just minutes from my Northeast D.C. home. The only problem: They were still hard, and my class was the next morning. No paper-bag ripening trick was going to get them ready in time.
I did what any smart market shopper would/should do: I quizzed the farmer. Harry Singh of Singh Sugar Maple Farm in Howard County, Md., was happy to oblige. When I told him I needed to rush the ripening process like I was a stressed-out commuter stuck in traffic, he knew just what to do, and it didn’t involve enclosing them with a ripe banana and letting ethylene do its thing. The paper bag can help, but my air-conditioned kitchen would slow it all down.
“Leave them outside,” he said, on a day that got into the mid-90s. “In the shade, not in the sun, and they’'ll be ripe in, oh, I’d say four to six hours.”
Back home that afternoon, I put a paper bag of the peaches out on the little balcony off my upstairs office, closed the door, and went back to work on my prep. The next morning, I didn’t even have to touch them to know they were ripe — although of course I did. One whiff, and that swoon-inducing aroma, unlike anything else in the world, told me all I needed to know.
My class focused on doing very little to the best produce while still looking like a genius cook, and for the peaches I introduced my students to one of my favorite techniques: broiling. I like to sprinkle peach halves with brown sugar, broil until bubbling and caramelized, and follow with sprinkles of ground cardamom. The sugar hardens into a thin crust in places, the spice seems to carry all of the peaches’ floral notes forward, and the broiler heats through the fruit while leaving it fresh and juicy — not cooked — as if it had just fallen from a tree and was still warm from the sun.
Honestly, the only thing I didn’t love about the dish was the name: I called them Broiled Peaches with Cardamom and Granola, but did that do them justice?
When I made them again this week, it struck me. So obvious. They aren’t broiled peaches. They are peach brûlée!
From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Copyright Credit: Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
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Recipe: Peach Brûlée with Cardamom and Granola
Makes 4 to 8 servings // Storage: Best eaten immediately.
4 large ripe peaches, halved and pitted
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
1⅓ cups granola, preferably one with nuts and dried fruit
Vanilla ice cream, for serving (dairy-free works beautifully here)
Position an oven rack about 6 inches from the broiler element and preheat the broiler to high.
Put the peach halves, cut sides up, on a foil-lined sheet pan or in a broiler-safe baking dish, in a single layer without crowding. Do not use glass, which can shatter under a broiler.
Sprinkle the cut sides evenly with the brown sugar.
Broil until the sugar has melted and bubbled and the tops are browned and lightly charred in spots, 4 to 8 minutes. Watch them the entire time; broilers vary enormously and these go from perfect to burnt in under a minute.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the cardamom, then with the granola.
Serve warm, with a scoop of ice cream.
Notes
Watch, don't time. The 4-to-8-minute range is wide because broilers are wildly inconsistent. Stay at the oven door.
Ripeness matters more than usual. A firm peach won't soften in four minutes under a broiler the way it would in a 25-minute bake. Buy fruit that gives to gentle pressure.
No need to pick out the dried fruit from your granola the way you would for a baked crisp. Because the granola goes on after broiling, nothing burns.
If your peaches are very sweet, cut the brown sugar back to 2 tablespoons. If they're mediocre, keep all 3; this is exactly the situation the recipe is for.
Substitutions
Other stone fruit. Nectarines are a one-for-one swap. Plums and apricots work too, but they're obviously smaller, so use more of them and check earlier, since less flesh means faster charring. Pluots, pineapple rings, and halved figs are all fair game.
The sugar. Anything that melts will caramelize. Coconut sugar and maple sugar bring their own flavor; turbinado or demerara give you a coarser, more stubborn crackle (they may not melt all the way). Granulated works in a pinch, but you'll miss the molasses depth. Maple syrup or honey caramelize beautifully too, but they're loose and tend to slide off the fruit, so brush lightly and expect a messier pan.
The spice. Cardamom is the whole personality here, but cinnamon, ground ginger, or a cinnamon-cardamom blend are all lovely. A pinch of five-spice or ground star anise takes it somewhere moodier.
The crunch. No granola? Chopped toasted nuts, crushed amaretti, crumbled gingersnaps, cacao nibs, or toasted coconut all deliver the contrast. For gluten-free, use a GF granola or just lean on the nuts.
On top. The recipe leans ice cream, but a cold spoonful of yogurt (dairy or coconut), labneh, mascarpone, or crème fraîche against the warm fruit is just as good. Or nothing at all. (They’re excellent naked.)
Halved for two
Everything scales cleanly, and — this is the part people get wrong — the broil time doesn't change. You're spreading the same-size peach halves across the pan either way, so watch for the same 4-to-8-minute window.
Makes 2 to 4 servings // Storage: Best eaten immediately.
2 large ripe peaches, halved and pitted
1½ tablespoons packed brown sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
⅔ cup granola, preferably one with nuts and dried fruit
Vanilla ice cream, for serving (dairy-free works beautifully here)
Follow the method exactly as written.
Recipe by Joe Yonan.
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