So what fruit-of-the-month are we into? It's that one and only felicitous month – September – when you can have it all.
Sturdy apples and pears appear while summer's last heat still reddens the tomatoes and coddles the peaches. And it's panic time at the farmstand. How can there ever be time for all that creative canning and wize freezing planned in July? I have developed the procrastinator's plan: freeze now, play later.
Homing in on which crop is fleeing fastest, I've had lush, fragile, irrevocable peaches on my mind. But then I often do. Native South Carolinians and Georgians, of course, have a near obsession with this fruit: Peach ice cream is the only flavor, peach cobbler the only pie, peach butter and never apple on biscuits and toast. Peaches in winter were the prerogative of royalty until recent times. . . . Now we can freeze up a big batch fairly effortlessly and decide in the calm of late autumn just what to do with them – jam, chutney, ice cream, pie, or simply a luxurious dish of peaches and heavy cream.
While the heady scent and flavor of peaches is well-preserved in freezing, the texture, alas, cannot survive. Canning actually does a better job of that. Even so, two out of three is a great score for peach-lovers and you'll adore yourself in January for a little effort now. Something to bear in mind: if you want a ripe peach tomorrow, you should have bought it the day before yesterday. Ripen peaches in a single layer in a cool, dim, airy place.
How to Freeze Peaches
First, you've got to deal with the fuzz. Fortunately, ripe peaches are even easier to skin than tomatoes and it's done exactly the same way. Blanche them, about four at a time, so that you do not reduce the water temperature too greatly, for about 10 seconds. If the peaches are green and hard they'll take much longer and you shouldn't be trying to freeze them anyway. Instantly plunge them into a basin of ice water to prevent cooking. Prepare a small bowl of water and lemon juice or the ascorbic-acid-based commercial powder, "Fruit Fresh," which is used to prevent peaches from discoloring. As the darkening strikes with the speed of summer lightning, it is absolutely necessary to have the lemon juice solution prepared first.
Cut the peach around its natural dividing line with a stainless steel knife. Pull off the skin and twist the peach open. Discard the pits or reserve them to make a delicious extract by cracking the kernels and leaving them in a small bottle of vodka for a few weeks – great flavor for peachy things. Leave the peaches in halves or slice them into the lemon juice and coat well. Sugar draws out the juices so do not add any; a truly ripe peach rarely needs this help anyway. Pack the peaches into plastic freezing containers, press a piece of saran wrap down on them to drive out air bubbles, cover with the lid, and freeze. For optimum results, process peaches as soon as they give at the shoulders to gentle pressure and before you must resort to refrigeration to keep them in good condition.
Peach Butter
Although the women of my family have been making peach butter for innumerable generations, this magnificent confection has apparently never really caught on in other parts of the country. I have never seen it commercially. This is one of the first recipes I wrote for this newspaper an appalling number of years ago. Makes four half-pints.
8 large, ripe, firm yellow peaches (4 lbs.)
1 lemon
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cinnamon stick
4 tsp. fine bourbon (approx.)
Skin the peaches, dropping the halves into a little water acidulated with the juice of the lemon. Chop them very coarsely and cook them in their own juice, stirring constantly, about 10 minutes. Add the sugar, mash the peaches coarsely with an old fashioned potato masher or some blunt object, add the cinnamon stick, and cook, stirring often over low heat until a little of the mass holds its shape on a chilled plate – about 30 minutes. This is a fruit "butter," not a jam, so should not be cooked to glassiness. Boil the lids and jars 10 minutes. Discard the cinnamon stick and ladle the peach butter into hot jars, taking them directly from the boiling water. Cool slightly and float a teaspoon of bourbon on the surface of each jar, which should be nearly filled to the rim. Seal with the lids and screw rings, let cool, and store. The jars need no refrigeration until after opening.
Peach Cobbler
Any "cobbler" is a deep-dish pie with no bottom crust – nice homey desserts that are easy to make but commercially impossible because they must be eaten hot and are too sloppy for transport. I tried to promote these along with old-fashioned trifles, flummeries, slumps, and fools in a 1973 book "Good Cheap Food." Maybe their time has come at last. Serves eight.
10 large, firm, ripe peaches (about 5 lbs.)
Juice of half a lemon
2 Tbsp. granulated ("Wondra") flour
4 Tbsp. sugar
Pinch of salt
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
2 Tbsp. sweet butter, cut into bits
Sprinkling of bourbon
1 recipe Rich Biscuit Dough (follows)
Peel and slice the peaches (preventing them from darkening is unimportant in a cobbler) and sprinkle with lemon juice. Mix the flour and sugar with the salt and mix into the peaches. Arrange them in a deep, buttered dish. Dot the surface with the bits of butter and and sprinkle well with bourbon.
Rich Biscuit Dough
A lattice-top short pastry crust is frequently used on a peach cobbler, though strictly speaking, a cobbler is topped with thin biscuits.
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 rounded Tbsp. sugar
6 Tbsp. sweet butter
1/2 cup sour cream (or heavy cream)
Mix the dry ingredients, then cut in the butter to the size of dried split peas. Blend in the sour cream with a fork, just enough to clean the bowl – it should be dry enough to pat out on a lightly floured board to a half-inch thickness. Cut into 2-inch biscuits and, beginning in the center, place these on top of the peaches. Bake in the center of a preheated 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes. Cover lightly with a piece of foil if the biscuits brown too rapidly – they should remain pale golden brown. Let the cobbler rest for 10 minutes and serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. In the moment when peaches and blueberries are concurrent, throw in one cup of blueberries.
Wild. Messy. Terrific.
