All About White Peaches

Recently I received a flat of white peaches. I was planning to preserve them but I quickly realized that wasn't such a good idea. White peaches are lower in fruit acid so they are extremely sweet. They have a lovely almost floral fragrance and a very soft juicy texture. All of this makes them great to eat out of hand, but not so great for canning or cooking. If you can them you need to add a lot of acid such as lemon juice and if you bake with them they lose their shape and can get very mushy.  White peaches are the most popular kind of peaches in Asia, but in the West and in Europe we tend to prefer yellow peaches. White peaches ripen very quickly and require refrigeration once soft or they will spoil. Freezing them is also an option. Since using them raw is best, I had to figure out what to do with them as fast as I could.  I decided to freeze most of the peaches. Frozen they can be added to smoothies. I also pureed some peaches and froze the puree to use to make ......

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Easy Peach Jam Recipe

I’ve made peach jam several times, thanks in part to an annual delivery of peaches courtesy of the Washington Stone Fruit Growers , but I continue to look for ways to simplify the canning process. Standard peach jam recipes call for a lot of sugar and some powder or liquid pectin. The result is good, but can be a bit on the sweet side and a little rubbery. My preference is for a softer jam with less sugar and frankly less fuss. I wondered if there might be a way to make jam without bothering with the tedious job of peeling peaches? It turns out, there is.  The key to this recipe is the peels. Lemon peel and peach peel are high in pectin and so if you cook the peaches with them, you won’t need to add any additional pectin. I started with a recipe from A Sweet Spoonful , but the main difference was I skipped peeling the fruit and used the lemon peel as well as the juice. I added some slices of fresh ginger in my first batch but I didn’t find it added much flavor so I’m skipp......

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Alison's Peach Chutney Recipe

I met  Alison McQuade  15 years ago. She wanted me to try her chutney and invited me to meet her at a local wine bar. At that time she was on the verge of quitting her day job and becoming a full time artisanal food producer. While to this day she doesn’t describe herself as a cook, she has mad skills when it comes to chutney. She is also quite a wonderful person and we quickly became friends.   Over the years I have bought McQuade's Celtic Chutney to give as gifts, made recipes using her various varieties of chutney and been an all around fan of her products. Faced with a box full of peaches this year supplied to me by the Washington State Stone Fruit Growers , I knew I wanted to make chutney but couldn’t imagine just turning to any old recipe. So I called on Alison for some guidance. Her recipe uses weights, so if you don’t have a digital scale, please use this as the excuse to buy one, they are not expensive and are essential for baking. The one I current......

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Peach Nectarine Butter Recipe

I can't help it. I love to experiment with recipes. But when it comes to canning, experimentation is not always a good idea. For safety sake, my canning recipes are usually just very minimal tweaks to recipes that I trust. When my second batch of fruit from Washington State Stone Fruit arrived last week I made low sugar nectarine preserves from one of my pal Sean Timberlake's recipes. Sean is the brains behind the do-it-yourself site Punk Domestics  and a canning expert. I also made a combination peach and nectarine butter from another recipe I'd used in the past.  I’m always eager for opportunities to adapt recipes and put my own spin on them and when it came to these recipes I was inspired to use some samples of bitters and an amaro from Greenbar Distillery . While it's typical to use them in cocktails, I asked Sean about the safety of using these ingredients as well as a bit of spice in canning. Here’s what he said, “Adding a small amount of alcohol or spice......

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Tomato Peach & Tofu Salad Recipe

I don’t know when I stopped making salad every night, but it happened. That’s not to say I don’t eat salad anymore, I probably eat it more often than ever, I just eat it as a main dish instead. At least several times a week for lunch and at least once a week for dinner, I serve a main dish salad. What makes it a main dish? I’d say protein. And tofu is a perfect plant-based protein for salads.  A few weeks ago I attended an event hosted by House Foods organic tofu. Chef Melissa King did the cooking and also a cooking demo. I picked up a lot of good ideas. I loved her take on a Caprese salad and I’ve made my own versions of it several times. In one version I made a small bite style appetizer by placing diced tomatoes and tofu on large basil leaves and dressed them with coarse salt and extra virgin olive oil. In another, I was captivated by another recipe I found for Tomato-Peach Salad with Tofu Cream . But I wanted the salad to be a main dish, rather than a starter so I ......

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Peach Barbecue Sauce Recipe

As a Canbassador, I receive a couple shipments of fresh stone fruit from Washington State to preserve. Over the past few years I have made a lot of things with peaches including Peach Ketchup  and Ginger Peach Preserves . While there are some good ideas on the SweetPreservation website, in the comments section of my Can-It-Forward giveaway post I received even more fantastic suggestions for canning peaches including peach preserves, peach butter, peach salsa, peach mostarda, brandied peaches, peach pie filling, and a jam from Piemonte with peaches, amaretti and cocoa powder. That should keep me inspired for years to come!  This year I ended up canning some peaches in a light syrup, and I also made Peach Barbecue Sauce. My recipe was inspired by one I found online,  Zesty Peach Barbecue Sauce , but I made some changes and am pleased with the results. Barbecue sauce is a very easy thing to make and easy to can. You can and should taste it before you can it and......

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Peach Ketchup Recipe & Ball Brand Giveaway!

I can, can you? Sure you can! Canning is not hard to do at all, especially if you pick a really easy project like canning fruit. This year I received a box of luscious peaches from Washington state. They were perfectly ripe, but a bit crushed in spots due to poor handling in transit. Instead of canning slices or halves, I used the fruit—some perfect and some not so perfect—to make peach ketchup!  Peach ketchup is a lovely peachy color, but it tastes very much like tomato ketchup. Taste it before you can it, and adjust the spices and sugar to suit yourself. Use really great tasting fruit, it should not be brown or overripe, but if it is soft in spots, that's ok. Use the tangy sweet and sour ketchup just as you would regular tomato ketchup. It’s particularly great on potatoes.  As in years past I am proud to be a  “Canbassador” for the Washington State Fruit Commission and to tell you about the Can-It-Forward event, sponsored by Ball Brand.  Augus......

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Ginger Peach Preserves Recipe

I am happy to be a "canbassador" for SweetPreservation.com , a community site of the Northwest cherry growers and soft fruit growers of Washington state. They sent me a big box of juicy, sweet, ripe Country Sweet peaches which I agreed to preserve, of course. A post from Dorie Greenspan on Facebook about ginger, peach vanilla jam inspired me to create preserves with the same flavor combination.  The difference between preserves and jam is sugar. Jam uses a lot of it and preserves use less. I like the flexibility of preserves. You can use preserves in place of jam but you can also use preserves in recipes or as a dessert topping. It's particularly good mixed with plain yogurt. The ginger and vanilla complement the tangy sweet flavor of peaches. I used a combination of fresh ginger and candied ginger, something I found in a ginger peach jam recipe . The ginger is very subtle, you just get a hint of it towards the end of each bite.  SweetPreservation  is ......

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