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

Fichi e maiali

Quite possibly both internationally redundant and globally essential, pizza holds a special place in many a stomach.  Certainly no exception is my own.  While one may only need the brain power of a fish to create pizza worth eating, the art of making an exceptional pizza demands a life of practice.  With the exception of some highly suspect “microwave pizzas”, there are few pizza’s (or flat breads) that escape the tractor beam of my gullet.  But, I can’t help but crave though the more sophisticated , palate pleasing, delicately dressed, perfect pies that sometimes I am lucky enough to consume or attempt to create.  I’ve included many pictures here to illustrate the process of making one of my favorite seasonal pies.  ”Fichi e Maiali” or Figs and Pigs is a flat bread I created a couple years back inspired by the fresh mission figs that drip off of the trees here in Northern California.  

 While I don’t feel I’ve even come close to making an excellent Pizza Dough in my life, I have made plenty of decent enough doughs to support the elegance of their toppings.  I find that the Joy of Cooking’s pizza dough recipe works just great.  The trick seems to be in the kneading; too little and you get something dry and brittle; too much and you get something really tough and bread like.  This night there was too much kneading, but in the end it passed.  

I had gathered a heap of deadly ripe mission figs when I was up north this past weekend and was really excited to make this again when I did.  I first took the hard nubs of the top of about 6 large ripe figs and then placed them in a bowl.  I added a teaspoon of sugar and a dash each of olive oil, salt and lemon zest.  I then mashed the whole mess up until it was relatively uniform in texture. 

 I had a good bunch of arugula lying around that I’d picked from the garden a day or two ago that I decided to add to the pie.  I chopped it up to garnish the pie and my side dish of fresh summer squash.  This time of year I try to eat summer squash as often as possible. In my opinion it is just no good when shipped over distances and out of season.  Now is the time to eat the hell out of it.  

 After stretching out the dough and rubbing it with olive oil I spread the fig mixture over the whole shebang and started topping it with a layer of fresh mozzarella.  Now it was time for the pig portion.  When it comes to meat I say “don’t skimp”.  It is an ingredient that I will always shell out for.  It is just better for so many reasons.   I went hunting for a really spicy salami which I think goes best with this pie.  Unfortunately for me they’d just sold the last of it.  After greedily tasting 10 or 12 samples I picked a really salty and peppery artisan salami.  In the end, I have to admit that it didn’t quite cut the mustard the way the spicy stuff would have.   I tried to substitute with some hot pepper flakes but it wasn’t the same.  I dressed the whole thing with the 

the salami, more cheese, salt, ground pepper, and arugula.  While that was in a 450* oven I sauteed the squash with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, white wine and arugula.  Right away I realized that I’d over dressed the pizza. I usually am of the persuasion that says “less is more” when it comes to toppings, but I think here I was a bit overzealous.  The end result was still pleasing as hell; a slightly spicy, salty-sweet, piggy-figgy, cheesy slice of delicious.  But I will be the fist to admit that it wasn’t my best effort.  Excitement and hunger won out over skill on this one.  But it sure looks nice in the picture!!

-Paul

Tres cobbly!

After living in Alaska for a couple of years, I became very fond of wild berries. What California lacks in diversity of delicious wild berries, it makes up for in an abundance of blackberries. I tried one for the first time about three weeks ago, when I picked a perfectly ripe one right in my backyard. It was fantastic! Very, very sweet. And now they are really starting to ripen up. Last weekend, I went out to my backyard and picked about a pint of blackberries for a blackberry cobbler.

I needed something else to fill out the fruit part of my cobbler, since the berries hadn’t quite peaked yet. I wasn’t able to pick enough for a whole recipe. Luckily, along with a summer’s worth of brats, I was donated an entire uneaten quart of blueberries, which were subsequently stored in the freezer for just such an occasion. The blueberries filled out the bottom of my baking dish nicely. I mixed the berries all together with sugar, flour and lime zest (lots of limes left over from the party, too… we ran out of gin… also, lots of leftover tonic water). In a separate bowl, I made the dough, which is just a sweet biscuit dough. Easy. Only thing is, maybe I should get a big plastic bin to put the flour into. Every time I need to use flour, I make a damn mess.

The cobbler recipe (Joy Of Cooking, thanks Joelle!) tells you that there are many ways to shape the dough for your cobbler, and all but one involves the use of a rolling pin. As much as I like to bake, I do not own one of these. A rolling pin and a kettle are the two things my kitchen needs more than anything else. Oh, now that I mention it, the Magic Bullet , which is a tiny blender, would also be handy. Anyways, the method which does not require flattening the dough using a pin involves rolling “small pieces of the dough into balls, flattening each one slightly, and placing them on the fruit.” I am lazy, so I just pinch small pieces of dough off of the dough slab and place them nimby-pimby atop the fruit. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 and you’re done!

This was my second cobbler (first one was peach, made a month ago). This one was better only because I used more fruit. The last one was too doughy. I would like to make smaller cobbles next time, because the fruit needs to stand out more. Or maybe just more berries, now that they are out in force. I’m going to make another cobbler real soon. Come visit!

-Sav