Category Archives: Garden and Orchard

  • Peach Lavender Jam

    July 20, 2012

    22 Comments

    Peach Lavender Jam.

    A bit of a “peachy” hue on the blog these days. But when you have a few hundred peaches with a limited shelf life, you work with the peaches (we are also giving them away to friends, whether they want them or not 😉 ). The only thing at the farm we have more of than peaches is lavender. It’s everywhere, and mostly for the bees. But since we have peaches and lavender, we are making Peach Lavender jam.

    We have lots of these…

    …and tons of this. Let’s make jam.

    This recipe comes from the excellent canning and pickling book “Tart and Sweet” from Kelly Geary and Jessie Knadler. We are by no means experts on canning and pickling, so this book is a great tool with both recipes and very clear guidelines for safe canning. But the key for any home canning / pickling is to use the base recipe and then follow your standard, safe processing instructions. Most setups will be similar, but some equip will vary. Just remember, sterilization is always a good thing.

    As for the actual jam, this is really a peach jam with a touch of floral, herbal and tannic notes from the lavender. The lavender keeps the sweetness of the peaches from overwhelming the flavor of the jam. But the key is just a hint of lavender. Too much lavender and your jam will taste like soap. In fact, you don’t actually put lavender in the jam at all, just steep some lavender in water, strain it out and the add the water to the fruit. Again, go easy with the lavender- less is more.

    The peeling and pitting dis-assembly line.

    This took a while.

    The process of making jam isn’t complex, but it is time-consuming. Making jam is a good activity to do with friends and/or a great way to put your kids to work. First you must sterilize and prepare your equipment. Make sure everything is good order before you start. As for the jam, you need to skin and pit 6 pounds of peaches. This involves cutting an X in the base of the peach, briefly blanching it in boiling water, plunging it in an ice bath and then skinning and pitting the peach. We take an assembly (dis-assembly?) line approach, but even with help, this takes a while. But we don’t do this every day either, so it was (kinda) fun.

    Steep the dried lavender and strain it out.

    Cook the fruit, lemon juice and sugar.

    Blend until smooth.

    Add calcium water, sugar and pectin.

    Once you have the peaches peeled and pitted the work is easier, but still requires time. You need to bring the peaches, some sugar and lemon juice to a boil in a large pot and cook the fruit for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile you need to steep some dried lavender flowers in 1 cup of boiling water for about 20 minutes. Strain the lavender from the water and add the water to the peaches. Then blend the peaches with an immersion blender, or in batches on a stand-up blender. Then add calcium water, pectin and sugar to the fruit and cook until you get a jammy consistency. To finish the jam, put it in hot jars and process for 10 minutes. Then cool and eat. Continue reading →

  • Weekly Cocktail #21: The Bellini

    July 20, 2012

    20 Comments

    The Bellini.

    It’s Red Haven peach season at Putney Farm, so now we need to use them. We made peach-lavender jam (recipe later today) and will be making peach preserves, peach butter and peach-vanilla ice cream. So we may as well make a cocktail. And if you have peaches, you might as well make Bellinis.

    To be fair, Bellinis typically combine white peach purée and prosecco (think Italian champagne, but sweeter and much less complex). We don’t have white peaches or nectarines (yet), so we are using our Red Haven peaches. But to our tastes, that is a good thing, as yellow peaches have more acidity than white peaches and/or nectarines. And while we like Bellinis with white peach purée, they can be cloying a bit sweet- so using more balanced yellow peaches improves the cocktail and provides a better color. But regardless of the peaches you have, the Bellini is a light, sweet and “long” drink that is good for summer brunch and afternoon parties. And we like cocktails at brunch and afternoon parties.

    Make the peach purée.

    As for the origins of the Bellini, the dates are bit hazy. But we do know that Giuseppe Cipriani, owner of Harry’s Bar in Venice, created the Bellini sometime in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s. He named it after Giovanni Bellini, a renowned 15th-century Italian renaissance painter. Bellini’s paintings, as with many works of his era, tended toward darker hues and somewhat bleak subject matter. So the connection to sweet peaches and sparkling wine seems a bit tenuous. At least the name sounds good.

    Muddle your peaches.

    In any event, the Bellini was originally a seasonal cocktail to feature local white peaches, but someone figured out how to preserve peach purée and it became a year-round drink. And the recipe has become somewhat “fungible” over the last 70 years, and not always to the good. At one point the Ciprianis licensed the name and recipe to a company to mass-produce the Bellini and it was so terrible different they bought back the rights. And good for them, some things are only so “fungible”. In the end, if the peaches aren’t good, it might be best to make something else.

    Fine-strain the muddled peaches.

    But if you do have ripe peaches, then making a Bellini is worth the effort, but there are a few extra steps. Firstly, you need to make a peach purée. There are a few ways to do this. If you are making a big batch of Bellinis, you should skin (make an X on the bottom of the peach with a knife and then blanche for 20 seconds), pit and then puree the peaches in the blender. If making just a few, muddling and fine-straining the peaches will be faster (don’t worry about the skins). Then you need to taste your peach puree and your prosecco. If both are sweet, add a scant dash of lemon juice. If both are tart, a dash of simple syrup might be a good idea. And then you need to deal with the bubbles. Peach puree and prosecco create a lot of foam. And we mean a lot. It will take a few minutes to fill the flutes as the foam subsides. You just need to wait it out. Relax, eat a peach, maybe listen to the Allman Brothers.

    A final note, if using champagne (and we don’t recommend it) use extra-dry or demi-sec, both are sweeter than Brut and will work better. But as Prosecco is almost always cheaper than Champagne, it is the right call and is readily available at most supermarkets or liquor stores. And when a Bellini is just right, it is a very tasty sip, and worth making. After all, if you have peaches, you need to use them…why not drink them?

    The Bellini:

    Ingredients:

    • 2 oz. fresh peach puree
    • 4 oz. Prosecco (or sweeter champagne or sparkling wine)
    • Lemon juice (optional, to taste)
    • Simple syrup (optional, to taste)

    Assemble:

    1. To make puree, expect 3 small or 1 large peach per serving. Pit the peaches. Muddle and then fine-strain to extract the puree.
    2. Add the peach puree and a few ice cubes to a cocktail shaker and shake to chill. Strain the puree into a chilled flute. Slowly add the prosecco, letting the foam settle, until full. Serve.
    Related articles

  • Orchard Update: Red Haven Peach Harvest!

    July 18, 2012

    29 Comments

    Red Haven peaches at harvest.

    A great day here at the farm. We managed to fight off some very determined squirrels, rats, birds and raccoons (and maybe coyotes) and get a real peach harvest. Our first tree to ripen gave us a few large, tasty peaches, but the animals dug under the nets and took the rest. Frustrating, but a good lesson. The tree we harvested today had most of the peaches, so we were able to augment the nets with wood and rocks until the peaches ripened. And we got a great haul of Red Haven Peaches! It’s been a few years coming and it was great fun to pick the peaches with the kids (although they found out picking fruit in the sun is real work).

    Red Haven trees are big producers.

    Weighting the nets kept the varmints from digging underneath.

    The haul from one small tree- a few hundred peaches about 1/2 the size of a baseball.

    As for the Red Haven peaches, they are one of the most common “eating” peaches. They are freestone peaches with a bright, sweet flavor and a decent amount of acidity. They are popular with farmers and home gardeners, as the trees are heavy producers and the peaches have a long “shelf life”. Red Havens are in season usually from mid-July until the end of August. We like these peaches a lot, but the Suncrests are still our favorites. But as we have a harvest of just one Suncrest peach, the Red Havens will be our focus this summer- at least until the nectarines ripen a few weeks from now.

    Our “lonely” Suncrest peach. Hopefully more next year.

    Nectarines are at least a week or two out. Hopefully our augmented nets hold up.

    So what we will do with all of these peaches? We are making peach-lavender jam, peach-vanilla ice cream, maybe peach butter and certainly a batch of Bellinis and other peach-driven cocktails. And we are already eating the peaches out of hand. But as much of the Putney Farm crew will be on the road for the next few weeks, we will give many of these away. Few things make us happier as gardeners than to have enough to share freely with friends.

    Time to get to work….

    Related articles

  • Chad’s Squid With Frying Peppers

    July 10, 2012

    15 Comments

    Chad’s squid with frying peppers.

    As we move deeper into summer our garden and the farmers market start to show an abundance of small “frying peppers”. Frying peppers make up a family of small, usually sweet, thin-skinned, peppers that start with a lovely pale green but will move to a deep red over time. While they have a variety of names (Jimmy Nardello, Shisito, Cubanelle, Italian frying, or Padron) most frying peppers are best served in simple preparations that highlight their sweet, grassy flavor. Many recipes simply suggest a quick, high-temperature fry in some olive oil and a touch of seasoning. That is a good way to enjoy frying peppers, and we do, but we also want to include them in main courses.

    Frying peppers, a real summer treat.

    Happily, our friend Chad (the professional chef and all-around good guy) made a simple, but incredibly tasty, recipe that combines squid and frying peppers. Chad made this last summer when peppers were in season and we couldn’t wait to try it again. The recipe combines sweet, buttery squid with the more herbal sweetness of the peppers, a dash of lemon and wine (if needed) provide some acidity and suddenly you have a light, balanced and very addictive dish. And a dish you can serve as an appetizer or a main course. And it takes just a few minutes to make.

    Simple ingredients but great flavors and textures.

    And this weekend our peppers came in, and the farmers market was full of early frying peppers (we had to augment our Jimmy Nardellos, we will plant more next year). And in a stroke of good luck, the fish guy at the farmers market had frozen, cleaned squid available. So we decided to go ahead and make the dish. A few quick text messages from Chad (thanks!) to confirm the basics of the recipe and we were off to the races.

    But first, a quick note on preparing and cooking the squid / calamari. Squid are affordable, widely available and quite tasty, but can be intimidating, particularly when you have to clean them yourself. Our advice is very simple. Don’t clean them yourself. Buy them cleaned or have your fish monger do it, squid are still inexpensive even when sold cleaned. If you must do it yourself, here is a good link on how.

    Saute the peppers and onions in a bit of olive oil.

    Otherwise, the key to cooking squid is that it either cooks very quickly over high heat, or low and slow in a braise. This recipe is a quick / high-heat recipe. But this means that it helps to cut the squid into pieces that are the same size so they cook evenly. If you have uneven pieces, the small pieces will be tough by the time the large pieces cook. The squid are done when the pieces are opaque and the edges curl. The best way to be sure the squid is done is to simply try a piece after a minute of cooking and keep testing. If tender and buttery, it’s done, take the squid off the heat. The squid will still cook a bit more from residual heat.

    Quickly cook the squid with olive oil and a dash of lemon and wine.

    As for making the dish, it is a very simple preparation. Clean the peppers, slice and the remove the seeds. Sauté the peppers with a few slivers of sweet onion in some olive oil until the skins slightly blister, about 6-8 minutes, and lightly season. Meanwhile slice the squid and then fry, over very high heat, in some olive oil for just 1-2 minutes.The squid will release liquid that provides the base for a light sauce. Add a dash of wine, a squeeze of lemon and then add the peppers and onion to the squid. Taste for seasoning and add salt, black pepper and some red pepper flakes if you like a touch of heat. Serve with rice, pasta or some crusty bread.

    Combine the peppers and squid, season and serve.

    We enjoyed this dish as much as the first time we tried it. The squid was buttery and sweet and the peppers added incredibly fresh flavors. It simply tasted like summer. And it is a light and healthy dish as well. So if you have frying peppers this summer, the first thing to do is just fry and eat them. But if you want to use the peppers in something more, try this dish out, it’s a winner. Thanks Chad!

    Chad’s Squid With Frying Peppers:

    (Adapted from Chad Callahan)

    Notes Before You Start:

    • There are many varieties of frying peppers, but you want small, thin-skinned peppers. Taste them for heat before you start the dish. Red or green varieties both work.
    • Frozen squid are not only fine for this dish, but preferred. Freezing helps tenderize squid. Continue reading →