ANOTHER THING YOU CAN DO WITH A PEACH
There are a lot of things you can do with a peach. (Read more: FOOD AND SEXUALITY: A LONG LOVE AFFAIR) Here’s a fun and family-friendly idea: a classic peach melba.
Serves 4.
4 peaches, slightly unripe
about 250g sugar, preferably cane, + one tablespoon
a tablespoon loose, good quality jasmine tea
a 500ml tub of good vanilla ice cream
a 150g container of blackberries or raspberries
Because we are going to poach the peaches for this recipe you don’t want them to be too ripe, so they will have time to soak up the flavour of the syrup before they start falling apart. That’s just as well, because perfectly ripe summer peaches are pretty hard to get anyway. To get started, halve the peaches with a sharp knife and try to take out the stones as cleanly as possible. If they don’t want to come out, you can wait until after poaching. Put the peaches, skin and all, into a wide pot, pour over the sugar and tea and cover with about a litre of water. Slowly bring this to a boil. If you’d like, you could add other flavourings as well, for example vanilla or tonka beans, or change out some of the sugar for honey or maple syrup. When the liquid is boiling, stir a few times to make sure the sugar is dissolved. Simmer for anything between ten and thirty minutes, until you can easily pierce the peaches with the tip of a sharp knife. Take them out of the liquid and let cool slightly.
For the sauce you have two options. The classic recipe uses raspberry sauce, which is made by cooking fresh raspberries with a little bit of water and some sugar for a few minutes, until the berries start falling apart, and then pushing this mix through a sieve. I find these sauces to often be too sweet and taste kind of cheap candy-like. I prefer instead to roughly mash some blackberries with a little sugar, and letting this mixture sit for a couple of minutes so all the juices release. I don’t strain this either: I want it knobbly and rough. The choice is yours.
After the peaches have cooled slightly you can easily peel off the skins, exposing the beautifully blushed flesh (the red from the skin kind of leaks into the fruit in the cooking process). You can also leave the skin on for more texture. Either way, you’re now ready to assemble:
Divide the ice cream into four dishes — I like two small scoops in each here — top with two peach halves and then drizzle over the sauce. Serve quickly to avoid the residual heat from the peaches melting your ice cream completely.
Also, never throw away the poaching liquid: This jasmine and peach infused syrup is delicious mixed with sparkling water for a light and fresh peach ice tea.
Recipe and Food Styling: Yannic Moeken
Photography: Junshen Wu
Production: Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenhain
