It is a song lyric, I am sure is stuck in many heads this
time of year. Here in western NY, peaches and apples are ripe, local and
plentiful, three things that are very important to me, and inspire most of my
meals.
A cookbook that has been on my
radar for a while is the Simply
in Season, Recipes that celebrate fresh, local foods in the spirit of
More-With-Less, edited by Mary Beth Lind and
Cathleen Hockman-Wert. It is published by the same people who
put out More-with-Less,
and has the same mentality I have lived with for my life. When it comes
down to it, I will not buy something organic that has to be shipped in from
across the country or world because what is the point. I’ll find a substitute,
or in some cases, organic doesn’t really matter. I would rather support my
local agriculture, work with what was probably picked in the last 48 hours,
than something that was harvested immature, and shipped a distance resulting in
pollution. This is a key reason in why we choose to participate in our local CSA.
Anyway, back to the peaches…
There are
some things in my fruit cellar that I only do biannually, they keep fine, and are
an undertaking to complete sometimes. Canning peaches is one of them, I’d
rather do a ton at once every other year, then yearly. Don’t get me wrong,
peaches are ending up in jars this year too, but in other ways. I have tackled
jam and liqueur so far, but plan on getting into chutney as well. Fast forward
to yesterday, the fruit flies were threatening to arrive in full force, and I
had some beautiful peaches on my counter, perfectly ripe and ready, so I made
kuchen. This recipe is from the first of the two cookbooks that I mentioned
above (SIS), I am giving it to you here with my variations.
Whole Wheat Peach Kuchen
¾ cup whole wheat pastry flour
½ cup all purpose flour
2 Tbs sugar
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ cup ground almonds
¼ cup cold butter
Combine all
dry ingredients above in a large bowl, cut in butter until crumbly and pat into
a pie pan or oven safe frying pan.
4 cups peaches, peeled and halved
3 Tbs sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Arrange
peaches in crust. Mix together the cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle on top. Bake
in a 400° oven
for 15 minutes, then:
1 cup plain yogurt (I had greek in the fridge)
1 egg, beaten
2 Tbs sugar
½ tsp vanilla
Combine and
pour over peaches and bake for an additional 25 minutes or set.
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