Un goodby triste à la saison de pêche

I am about to get hella-serious up on the blogosphere right about now!  Yea that’s right I said “hella”!  But I am asking you, dear reader, to forgive this small infelicity of California parlance and move your attention to the photo that lies above these feeble sentences and then get serious with me.  Yes, my friends, it is a peach.  When at its peak ripeness, a peach is a succulent, sloppy, suggestive, sweet, dazzling, spellbinding, enchanting and an unparalleled fruit; a fruit that has gripped my gastronomical sensibilities and rendered me its helpless slave since I moved to California 3 years ago.  While I am a native Pennsylvanian (where Amish peach cultivation carries a weighty and reputable history), I dare admit that I had never really fallen in love with the furry jewels until recent history.  It might be a waste of time and blog-space to make excuses for that, so I dare not.  The important thing here is that I love the damn things.  More importantly, I aim to eat one per day during the peak season and typically succeed.  So I feel comfortable saying I know them well.  I won’t however just eat any ol’ peach, mind you.  I prefer the ones that are nearly moments from the inevitable compost bin; nearly dripping off of the pit.  For the sake of the recipe I am about to show you however, I chose one that was a little on the firm side for me (though, the rule of thumb being that the pit almost always falls out effortlessly). And as you read along, you’ll see that this post is actually more about pork than it is about peaches and about a seasonal celebration more than anything else.  But reader be learned, this was a meal inspired by peaches and…well salad….. what came about later is happenstance.

In September, my Mother paid me a visit on her way back from a once-in-a-lifetime adventure to Australia and New Zealand. Excited at the opportunity to spoil her rotten, I began planning a meal as we toured some of San Francisco’s best markets. Fortunately for me, she arrived at the best time for food in Northern California.  In mid-September, Northern California’s wild fennel sways high in the breeze, root crops start to crowd local vegetable stands, and Gravenstein apples start to compete for first fiddle with the last of the season’s peaches.  I wanted to create a dish that spoke to all of these praise-worthy events.  What I came up with was a variation on a dish I have made a couple of times in the past:  “Center Pork loin roast with fennel, apples, root vegetables in a citrus gravy. Served with an Amyitis salad with pan fried peaches and an orange vinaigrette.”

In my trusty old spice blender,  I ground together whole fennel seed with salt and peppercorns to create the rub.  I then crushed some garlic and mixed it with the rub and rubbed the loin roast (what pork chops are cut from). I massaged  it deeply into the meat while my oven preheated.  I then seared it in a pan with some rendered bacon fat to brown it on all sides before adding it to the roasting pan.  Believe it or not, most pigs are bred to be leaner and leaner to meet consumer demands for leaner meat.  So to compensate I used the bacon fat for some much needed grease support.  

While that browned, I cut up the fennel, parsnips, carrots, onion, and apples and lined the roasting pan with them.  I then made a basting mixture of hot water, white wine, bacon fat, vegetable broth, juice from 1/2 an orange, salt, and pepper.  After the pork had browned I set it atop the pile of roots and fruit and shaved the peel of the 1/2 orange all over the whole thing.  I then poured the basting mixture over it and put it, covered, in the oven at about 375.  

While the pork did its thing, I started on carefully roasting the peaches.  In about 1/2 tsp. of butter and 1/2 teaspoon of bacon fat I started cooking them in the cast-iron at a very low heat.  Being careful to not handle them too much (as I wanted to retain their structure) I let them slowly brown until they were soft enough to stick a fork through but not fall apart.

For the salad,  I made a dressing of local olive oil, sauterne, juice 1/2 of an orange, rice vinegar, Dijon, garlic and salt.  I used it to dress the leaves and then added orange and lemon zest and black pepper and layered my delicious peaches atop the salad. Mom and friends feasted on an appetizer while I got things together.

Sadly, at this point my direction and attention shifted from documentarian to expediter as I plated and served the dishes to everyone.  As we’d been, ourselves, basting in the mouth-watering odors of the roasting pork for too long, we could barely contain ourselves from diving in head first.  It wasn’t until halfway or more through the meal when I realized I’d forgotten to document the finished product.  So while this dish was (If I do say myself) artfully presented (with pork chop resting atop a pile of savory sweet vegetable love) I have but only this shameful picture of my half-eaten and fully dramatic production.  Picture or no picture, the essence of  my mission “spoil mama rotten” was accomplished, and how!

-Paul

“Lip Sumac-n’ Good”

Abandon all hopes of tidy and brief explanations in this post.  There are a lot of pictures I have included here too that I think explain, as well as I can, how to create this simple and extremely delicious version of a common roast chicken dinner.  But I moved to say first that this is a meal that I’ve made hundreds of times in just as many variations.  Let’s face it, roast chicken is traditional folk food the world over; a meal that finds a comfortable place on both rich and poor tables alike.   Portable, industrious, nutritious, and satisfyingly delicious; it is one of my favorite meals period.

At a Mediterranean restaurant about a year back I ordered the rotisserie chicken.  I was instantly warped back to my time backpacking in Europe with my girlfriend.  At that time, my food budget of 10 Euros per day afforded us at least one daily roast chicken.  Throughout the Northern Mediterranean Coast the chicken was spiced with something I couldn’t place but also couldn’t get enough of.  In the restaurant this night I was able to ask what this cryptic flavor was.  ”I think you call it Sumac” the waiter said.  ”The shrub?” I said, totally puzzled.  Sumac grew wild all over where I grew up.  And for fear of confusing it with the infamous “poison sumac” I never tried to, nor did I know, you could eat it.  I’ve been meaning to experiment with it ever since.

Having no recipe, I tried to re-create the flavor from memory.  I started with an organic free-range chicken (happy meat tastes better).  I then took handful of sumac buds, about a tbsp. of salt and peppercorns and some dried parsley and placed them in my spice grinder (a recommissioned coffee grinder).  I ground them well into a rubbing powder. I then prepared crushed fresh garlic with about 1/3 cup of good olive oil. Having already cleaned and salted the raw chicken inside and out, I rubbed the garlic mixture all over the bird and then followed suit with the rub.  I placed the uncovered bird breast down on a roasting rack in the preheated oven and turned it down to about 350*.  

A couple weeks ago I ate some homemade spatzle at a friend’s house.  I’d never realized just how easy it was until I watched her make it.  I decided to give a try.  Luckily, I was able to find a spatzle maker for about 6 bucks at a kitchen store near my house; though I have seen them for as much as $16.  My friend Joelle did the honors and prepared the spatzle dough according to the recipe on the maker’s package.  The dough turns out thick and sticky. It is then loaded into the hopper over a boiling pot of water.  The hopper is rubbed along the grate to produce small pellets of dough.  As the pellets drop in the water they form odd shaped small pasta.  The pasta cooks for about a minute and then is left to drain and cool.

When the chicken was removed and set aside to cool, I moved on to the next step with the spatzle. Once fully drained and cooled, the spatzle is then pan fried in a good helping of butter, salt and pepper.  To spice things up,I chopped half an onion, parsley and a small zucchini to add to the mix. I generally let the chicken rest for about 10 min. before carving into it.  But I often cut the skin between the thigh and breast immediately to release steam and heat more quickly.  I don’t know if this is actually a good thing but it has always seemed to work well for me. This 10 minutes allowed me to prepare the spatzle in the pan and get the salad ready.

My favorite salad as of late has been a really simple one using the best of what is seasonal.  While everything else was cooking I was steaming a skinned and diced golden beet.

I remove the beet from the steamer basket and instantly place it in a small bowl with a small glug of rice vinegar and salt.  while the beet cooled in the bowl I got the greens ready.  I grabbed a heap of arugula, placed the warm beets on top, added a glug of olive oil, lemon zest, salt and pepper.

On the plate the whole thing looked pretty nice, but the taste was even better.  Not only did everything come out great, I was able to re-create the chicken of my golden memory.  In fact, I may never prepare roast chicken another way again.  As for the spatzle, it was excellent. Though, not without room for improvement.  I have faith that next time I’ll nail it.  Yum.

-Paul