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