What’s cooking? Peach Sorbet and Rustic Peach Tart
It’s been a season of joy. The pandemic kept my hubby and me in Texas last summer, and while we don’t suffer from any sort of food deprivation there, I nevertheless moped my way through every Sunday morning of June through September, missing the rotating splendor at my NJ farmers’ market – of berries, garlic scapes, tomatoes, arugula, corn, and the stone fruit parade of peaches, apricots, nectarines, and plums. At one point, my despair was so great I persuaded a friend to ship a box of peaches to me. (Not recommended, but desperate times call for desperate measures.)
And now the long nightmare is over – at least the farmers’ market part. I’d been gone so long I had forgotten the high I get just from walking into the area (normally a parking lot) dotted with tents – the shaded tables displaying everything from fresh produce to mushrooms, honey, and all manner of baked goods. All my friends were there – and by that I mean the organic farmers, the mushroom guy, the Duffin stand (doughnut texture in a muffin), the fruit farmers, and my BFF, the fish monger. Many of them actually remembered my name, probably because I’m always talking to them. When will the ground cherries be back this year? How do you like to cook swordfish? Will you still have Shiro plums next week? Are these cherry tomatoes Sun Golds?
IMHO, the stars of the show are the peaches. The season seems to go on and on... until suddenly, tragically, it’s over. But not yet. And even if you haven’t got a farm stand nearby, the grocery stores are still chock full of peaches. I recommend leaving them out on your counter – assuming they’re relatively hard when you get them – for 2-3 days. Refrigerating slows the ripening process, and in my experience, makes them harder to peel.
And what has the Kitchen Goddess done with her peaches? Frankly, almost everything. For starters, she has a sliced peach with yogurt and a teaspoon of honey every morning for breakfast. (Yes, every morning for at least the past month. You’d think it would get boring, but no.) For lunch and dinner, there’s the unbeatable summer salad combo of diced peaches, juicy beefsteak tomatoes, and sweet uncooked corn cut from the cob. Dessert brings a scoop of peach sorbet or frozen peach yogurt, or perhaps a slice of rustic peach tart with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. And if you are feeling adventuresome, try pickled peaches. (More on those later.) I haven’t yet made peach jam, but just wait...
Here's one of those salads – no recipe, just grab a little of everything you got at the farmers’ market, and toss them with some Honey-Lemon Vinaigrette.
In past posts, I’ve written about Eggless Peach Ice Cream (Click for link.)
and Frozen Peach Yogurt.(Click for link.)
But, you know, you can never really get enough of frozen peach desserts. So this time, I’m telling you about Peach Sorbet, because if you have an ice cream machine, it is falling-off-the-log easy.
Making sorbet is so easy; the critical elements are the quality of the fruit – which should be as good as you can find – and the type of fruit, as fruits high in pectin (berries, stone fruit, and grapes) or fiber (mangoes, pears, and bananas) are viscous and full of body, and make for an especially creamy sorbet. The food- and travel-writer Max Falkowitz has written in depth on the Serious Eats website (seriouseats.com) about sorbet and ice cream. The Kitchen Goddess has made her share of sorbet that became bricklike in the freezer, so she was especially happy to read Max’s suggestion to include a bit of corn syrup to improve the viscosity of the sorbet. It works.
Peach Sorbet
Adapted from Max Falkowitz at Serious Eats (seriouseats.com)
Makes 1½ quarts.
3 pounds fresh or frozen peaches (about 8 whole), peeled and diced*
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed juice from 1 lime
1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1 tablespoon ginger liqueur
Special equipment: blender or food processor, and ice cream maker
*Kitchen Goddess note on process: Max prefers to purée his peaches with the skins on, then run the purée through a fine-mesh strainer. The Kitchen Goddess thinks that straining peach purée is tedious and boring, so she peels her peaches before puréeing. You can choose your own m.o., which can even include not peeling and not straining, as long as you don’t mind little bits of skin in your sorbet.
Purée the peaches in a blender or food processor with the lime juice and sugar until the sugar is fully dissolved and the mixture is a smoothness to your liking. (Some folks do like lumps of peach in their sorbet.) Add the remaining ingredients and blend briefly. Taste and add more salt if the purée seems bland. (Extra salt can help the peach flavor pop, so add ¼ teaspoon and taste.)
Chill the purée for 2-3 hours, then process in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Store in the freezer for a couple of hours before serving.
* * *
For my peach tart, I thought I’d hew to a sort of farm-stand flavor by using whole wheat flour in the pastry. It has a mild nuttiness that reads almost sweet, and plays well off the lightly tart taste of the peaches. The Kitchen Goddess added the pistachios for texture; and because she is a bit of a purist about the taste of peaches, she refused to contaminate them with the ginger or cinnamon that some recipes include. Feel free to add a half-teaspoon of either spice if you wish.
Kitchen Goddess note about the fruit: Peaches tend to get brown once they’ve been peeled. So these directions have you peeling/slicing the peaches after the dough is rolled out and ready. If you prefer, you can peel/slice your peaches while the dough is chilling; if you do, add the peeled fruit to a bowl of cold water with lemon juice to keep them looking fresh.
Rustic Peach Tart
Serves 8.
Ingredients
120 grams (1 level cup) all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
113 grams (slightly less than 1 cup) whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, each tablespoon cut into fourths, then chilled well
¼ cup Crisco, cut into 5-6 bits and chilled
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, chilled
1 tablespoon vodka, chilled
3 tablespoons cold water
¼ cup pistachios, coarsely chopped
2-3 tablespoons milk or cream
2-3 tablespoons Turbinado sugar
Kitchen Goddess note: Turbinado sugar is a coarse-grained sugar that has been only partially refined to retain some of the original molasses from the sugarcane. As such, it has a subtle caramel flavor. Sugar in the Raw is the best-known brand of turbinado sugar, and most grocers carry at least one other brand, including bulk. You can make your own – as I did for this tart – from equal parts white sugar and dark brown sugar, but the Kitchen Goddess prefers the coarse-grained look of the real thing on the crust. She’s such a perfectionist.
First make the pastry. Put the flours, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 4-5 times to mix the ingredients and add air to the flours. Distribute the cold butter and Crisco evenly on top, and pulse another 12-15 times until the fats are well distributed, with some pea-sized chunks scattered here and there in the mix. The texture should resemble coarse sand.
Combine the vinegar, vodka, and water, and sprinkle it around the flour/fat mixture. Pulse just until the mixture begins to hold together in a clump, 15-20 pulses. (If necessary, you can add another tablespoon of water, but I have not had to so far.)
Gather and press the dough into a ball, kneading it as little as possible but making sure no dry spots appear. Form the dough into a disk about 6 inches across, wrap well in cellophane wrap, and chill at least 1 hour (up to overnight).
Once the dough is thoroughly chilled, roll it out on a floured piece of baker’s parchment to an 11-inch circle, ⅛-inch thick. Use extra flour as necessary to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin or the parchment. Trim off and discard any straggly bits of the dough and transfer – carefully! – the parchment/pastry to a large, rimmed baking sheet. Refrigerate the pastry circle for 10-20 minutes.
Kitchen Goddess note on rolling the pastry: That KG gets all bent out of shape even with a rustic tart, if the pastry isn’t a near-perfect circle. If you are similarly afflicted, here’s the KG solution: Use a pencil or black Sharpie to trace the circumference of an 11-inch pan onto a piece of baker’s parchment. Turn the parchment over. Voilà – you have a see-through pattern for your rustic tart dough, without fear of ink/pencil on the food.
Preheat the oven to 375º.
Starting about 1½ inches in from the perimeter of the round, arrange the peach segments in concentric circles until you reach the center.
Sprinkle the pistachios over the peaches all the way to the edge. Do the same with the sugar, reserving a couple of teaspoons of sugar for the part of the crust that gets folded over.
Fold the outer rim of dough over the peaches, pleating it in overlapping folds as you move around the circle. Brush the pastry border with the milk or cream (to help the crust brown), and sprinkle the border with the remaining Turbinado sugar. Bake 45-50 minutes, or until the outer crust is golden.
Let the tart cool in the pan on a wire rack. Cut into wedges and serve with ice cream or whipped cream.
So stay cool and have dessert first!
