I have the pleasure of writing a monthly column for the New York Times, which comes with many things - seeing my words in print (real ink!), readers who cook the recipes every month. And, what I look forward to most: the comment section.
There is a whole Instagram account dedicated to the best NYT Cooking comments (once you’ve read a handful, you’ll understand why). Take the reader who made my caramelised peaches with rum and cream last year and reported back:
I guess everyone has their own idea of the perfect peach! Mine is caramelised with lots of booze and cream, Sal…Monella has other ideas, which I totally respect.
A peach should be heavy with juice and soft enough to yield gently beneath your thumb. Sweet, floral, just a little tart, tasting of summer. Only this morning I sliced one of these rare specimens, added to a bowl of Greek yoghurt, then scooped out half a passionfruit on top.
This was my breakfast, it’s nearly dinnertime now, and I am still thinking of it.
In reality, peaches are too often slightly mealy, picked too early to survive the long journey, and none of the give you get from something that actually ripened where it grew.
I have not had a great number of truly perfect peaches in my life, and yet I measure every peach since against them - chasing an exception, not the fruit as it actually is on the supermarket shelf.
It’s not just peaches, either. There’s always a slightly better version of things sitting just out of my reach. The city I’ll move to once the timing’s finally right. For others it’s the job that’ll make sense of everything (luckily, I already have that one); the version of themselves that’s just around the corner. We hold out for the better one, and quietly downgrade the actual, available life in front of us.
Better to just get on with the peaches you’ve got in front of you.
When I find good peaches this summer, I’ll roast them with tomatoes until both turn jammy and sweet, then fold them through pasta with a touch of miso. The good peach goes so well with tomatoes, making them taste even riper and more rounded.
And when there isn’t a good peach at all, I open a tin. My colleague Verena introduced me to mixing tinned peaches with Angostura bitters, mostly in pies and cobblers, and it turns out it works just as well in a glaze for chicken wings: sticky, deeply savoury, gone in minutes.
Tomatoes and peaches both turn sweeter and jammier when roasted, and a touch of miso keeps that sweetness from taking over the sauce (especially if you’re working with very ripe peaches). The blistered tomato and almond topping adds crunch and a little heat. A good one for when peaches are at their best.
Tinned peaches don’t get nearly enough credit. Here, they become the base of a deeply savoury glaze for chicken wings - helped along by coconut aminos, which caramelises beautifully and adds umami depth without the saltiness of soy. Angostura bitters is the less obvious addition, but it does something good to stone fruit - making it taste more like itself (in pies, cocktails and compotes, too). Leave them out if you can’t find them; the wings will still be very good. We tested this with our own chilli blend, but Aleppo works just as well - and if you can’t find either, regular chilli flakes do the job fine.
The glaze works equally well with baby back ribs, especially on the barbecue.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.