It's pie time

Research for #LetsLunch pie. Lucy Mercer. A Cook and Her Books.

I need to bake a pie. Not a bad prospect for a rainy Labor Day afternoon. This morning, over coffee, I'm poring over my favorite baking cookbooks for inspiration. Savannah writer Damon Lee Fowler's glossy "New Southern Baking," a pair of pamphlets from Pleasant Hill's Shaker community "We Make You Kindly Welcome" and "Welcome Back to Pleasant Hill," and a classic from my Harvest Gold youth, "Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook." 

Should I bake a buttermilk chess pie, the most-pinned recipe from A Cook and Her Books? Or a sweet potato custard pie, a recipe adapted from another much-loved book, "A Treasury of Southern Baking," by Prudence Hilburn? In these last days of summer, I keep going back to my first pie love, peach pie.

Zinnia with grasshopper. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 And peach it may well be. On the return drive from visiting family in middle Georgia, we pulled off at a roadside fruit stand and bought a case of plump, late season peaches. I intended to buy a basket for $10, but the fella offered me a case for $25. I told him that was more than I needed. He said "$20, then." When I hesitated, not a bargaining stance, I promise you, I was really pondering what I would do with a case of peaches ripening on my countertop with only the Labor Day holiday to deal with them before they turned to overripe mush. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm making a deal for you," he said, and I ran back to the car for an extra five-spot.

Peaches. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 I may have been snookered, these late-season peaches are plumped up from the excess rain we've had in the South this summer. The sweetest fruit is in June, but sometimes late season peaches will surprise you. The first I picked up and bit into was mealy and bland, unfinishable. My daughter couldn't keep her mitts off of the fruit, and grabbed a good one, finishing it in six bites. These may be good pie peaches, with a bit of coaxing and cooking, more sugar, some lemon juice, maybe a turn in the roasting pan. With a bit of advice from my baking gurus, we'll see how this turns out.

South Carolina Peaches. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Peach stand, middle of nowhere, Georgia. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Peaches. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 And, of course, if the peaches don't turn out, there's always sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

The pie is for September's installment of #LetsLunch, a global food blogging party. The theme of pie is open to wide interpretation here ~ pretty much any combination of fruit and batter or dough will do. And why limit the theme to sweet concoctions? Savory versions like chicken pot pie fit the theme, too. We'll post stories on Friday, September 13. Check out the #LetsLunch page on Facebook and follow on Twitter #LetsLunch. Hope to see you there.

Sweet tea peach scones



Scones with tea-soaked peaches by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


Summer in the South means sweet tea and peaches, at least for this Georgia girl. But two weeks past Labor Day means that the peaches are fading fast. One way to keep the sweet, floral peach flavor in my baked goods is to use dried peaches. I chopped up a package, soaked them in the table wine of the South - sweet tea, and added them to my buttery buttermilk scone recipe. Oh, my heavens, these are good.





Peaches by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 
Sweet tea and peach buttermilk scones

My favorite tip for tender scones is to shred chilled butter into the dry ingredients. I just use an ordinary grater, the kind I use for shredding rat-trap cheddar cheese, and run the chilled stick of butter across it. The resulting butter curls are uniform and perfect for blending into the flour mixture.

1 (6 oz.) package dried peaches
1/2 cup sweet tea
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, frozen
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
Milk or cream for glazing
Turbinado, demerara or sparkle sugar for glazing

1. Dice dried peaches by first slicing them into thin strips, then chopping crosswise into 1/4-inch pieces. Use your sharpest chef's knife. A bit of cooking spray on your knife might also help. Place diced peaches into a microwave safe bowl, add 1/2 cup sweet tea and zap in microwave for 1 minute. Remove from microwave and let cool on counter while preparing the scone dough.

2. In a batter bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Using a regular grater, shred the chilled butter and with a light hand, gently mix the shavings into the dry ingredients. Using your hands and a gentle, quick touch, make sure the butter is evenly distributed throughout the flour mixture.

3. Pour in the buttermilk and stir gently with either a wooden spoon or my instrument of choice, a silicone spatula. If mixture seems dry, add additional buttermilk until a cohesive dough forms. The dough should be slightly wet and sticky, but not overly so.

4. On a floured countertop, press dough into a rough 12 X 6 inch rectangle (helpful shaping instruction visuals may be found on my blueberry scone post here). Spread soaked peaches onto dough, using your hands to press the fruit into the dough. Fold into thirds, letter-style. Press into 12 X 6 rectange again and fold letter-style again. If any little peach guys pop out, just press them back into the dough. Press again into a 12 X 6 rectangle and cut into 16 triangles. Place scones on a lined baking sheet. The scones can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 24 hours.

4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Carefully brush each wedge with buttermilk or cream and sprinkle turbinado sugar over the top. Bake at 400 for at least 15 minutes. They may need a bit more time, depending on your oven, convection, etc. Scones are ready when they are golden brown on top and bounce back when touched lightly in the center.

More variations on the scone theme:

1. Scones for breakfast (1/2 recipe buttermilk scones)
2. Raspberry scones
3. Cream cheese and apricot scones
4. Pineapple and ginger scones
5. Blueberry and lemon scones (includes shaping instructions and pictures!)

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

Eat a Peach

Glass peach at the Atlanta Botanical Garden by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 In 1970, when I was a young girl in tri-colored Keds and slip-down pigtails, my family packed up the blue Chevy station wagon and moved from Texas to Gaffney, South Carolina. I think my parents first saw that ferrous red clay and thought they had come to the jumping-off point of the earth. They were both Southerners, but city folks - Dad from Birmingham and mom from genteel Nashville, they weren’t prepared for the Mayberryness of upstate South Carolina, but it grew on them, so much so that 30 years after we moved away, my mom still has her copy of the Gaffney phone book tucked away in her desk.

Gaffney had about 20,000 citizens then, living in communities with names like Grassy Pond, Macedonia and Corinth. We lived in a new neighborhood, Rutledge Acres, bordered by farms, just off the frontage road, in a brick ranch house on Westland Drive. A neighborhood with lots of kids who rode their bikes on the looping street that was ideal for an after-dinner stroll.

Gaffney is known for more than red clay - it’s in the Piedmont, the Italian phrase for "foot of the mountains," with climate and soil ideal for growing peaches. In my biased opinion, the best peaches in the world are grown there.

Growing up in Gaffney, Sunny Slope Orchards was the king of the peach business. On dusty summer evenings, my parents would load us kids into the station wagon for a trip to the peach shed to buy a crate of just-picked and processed tree-ripened peaches. To this day, I remember the hum of the machinery, the oppressive summer heat and the smell of just-washed peaches. Do you think that peach in the grocery store smells like heaven? Imagine a shed with thousands of peaches - unbelievable - the sweet aroma of the fruit was overwhelming.
An Italian family, the Caggiano's, owned Sunny Slope, (and still do, although the business is now consolidated in Bridgeton, N.J.). The vintage fruit label on the crate features a racing car with the script "V. Caggiano & Sons." I took a peach crate with this label with me to college:

 

During peach season, we’d go to the Little Moo Dairy Barn - I’m not making the name up, it’s the ice cream shop of my childhood - and I’d order a Peach Parfait in a plastic cup with a removable bottom. Layers of soft-serve vanilla ice cream and juicy peach chunks, topped off with whipped cream and a cherry. If you wanted to save the last few bites of the ice cream, you could remove the bottom, put it on the top and prop the container in the freezer.

There was one other way to eat a peach, and every person should have this memory: standing barefoot on the front porch with a ripe peach in your hands, biting through the suedey skin to the soft flesh underneath, the juice forming rivulets down your arm and dripping on your toes. You know what you do, you reach your tongue out and lick that last little drop of your chin. Oh, that was good. One down, a bushel to go.

Peaches by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

To showcase just one recipe with peaches, I decided to go all Harvest Gold '70s and make a version of a company’s coming dish - Peach Pizza. It’s a sweet brioche base with sliced peaches, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and baked.

This is more of a breakfast or brunch treat than a dessert. The brioche is delicious, but if you’re not a baker, buy a package of puff pastry, roll out one piece, cut out a 10-inch circle, brush with melted butter, top with the sliced peaches, sugar and cinnamon and bake according to package directions. The result will be crisp and delicious.

Peach pizza by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 

 Peach Pizza

Yield: 4 Pizzas

1 cup whole milk, scalded

2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

3 eggs, beaten

1 package instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

6 cups flour

1/4 cup butter, melted

3 pounds peaches, peeled and thinly sliced

Sugar, for sprinkling

Cinnamon, for sprinkling

 1. To scald milk: Pour milk into pan and turn heat to medium. As the milk heats, look for a ring of bubbles around the perimeter. (Don't walk away from boiling milk - over-boiled milk is absoslutely the worst pot to clean.) If a skin forms, stir it into the milk. Remove from heat, add butter and let cool.

2. When the milk mixture cools to slightly warm, add sugar, yeast, salt and eggs.

3. Using a heavy-duty mixture, pour in milk mixture then add flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing until dough is soft, but not sticky.

4. Switch to a dough hook and knead dough for a couple of minutes. Remove dough from bowl, coat the interior of the bowl with oil, return the dough to the bowl, flipping the dough until it is well-coated. Cover with plastic wrap, set in a warm place and let rise until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

5. Punch down dough, knead a couple of times, then divide into four balls. Shape each ball into a round and place on lined baking sheets.

6. Preheat the oven to 350°. Brush melted butter over the dough and cover with peach slices. Brush more butter over the peaches and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes.

7. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or yogurt or whipped cream.

Text & images © 2010 Lucy Mercer.

The blown glass peach in the first photo is by the Cohn-Stone Studios on display through October at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

The recipe is adapted from GroupRecipes.com.

Baked Aleutian Cupcakes & HMFPIC

Peaches by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

"HMFPIC - You Know Where"

If you hold Macon, Georgia, near to your heart then you recognize the acronym HMFPIC from the classified ad placed in the Macon Telegraph & News each June 1st. The ad didn't announce a clandestine meeting, but an ice cream event - Homemade Fresh Peach Ice Cream at Len Berg’s restaurant on Post Office Alley next to the Federal Courthouse.

Macon is close to Fort Valley in nearby Peach County, home of the Blue Bird Bus Company and the sweet Georgia peaches at Lane Southern Orchards. When the first peaches were picked and brought to Len Berg’s, they were churned into a creamy vanilla custard ice cream. To get the word out, each June 1, Maconites could look in the back pages of the Telegraph, not in a display ad, but the classifieds, for the cryptic message: “HMFPIC - You Know Where.”

Len Berg's was an original - in business from 1908 until it closed just a few years ago. The building was small, with unusually low ceilings, but the location, especially to feed the lunch crowd, was great - in the downtown business district close to both the Federal and the County courthouses. The menu was classic meat-and-two-or-three, with excellent Southern vegetables. I managed to get to Len Berg’s a few years before it closed. I had some tasty fried chicken and a pimento cheese sandwich - this is kind of a Macon thing, like chicken and waffles everywhere else. And we concluded with HMFPIC.



Peaches and cream ice cream by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



I make my own HMFPIC and the key is to use dead ripe peaches, the soft fragrant fruit that is just hours from being compost. Here’s my version of peach ice cream, using these gorgeous California peaches - I know, I should be ashamed, but the market had California peaches, not Georgia ones. They are pretty, though, aren’t they?

Georgia Peach Ice Cream

I have a tried and true custard recipe for vanilla ice cream, but this recipe, adapted from "Beans, Greens and Sweet Georgia Peaches" by Savannah food writer Damon Lee Fowler, is divine in its simplicity. This is truly peaches and cream, frozen with sugar and salt and vanilla, simply delicious and easy.

4 large, ripe peaches

Juice of one-half lemon

1 cup sugar, divided

1 quart heavy cream

Salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Peel the peaches, halve and rough chop. Place them in a food processor and pulse a few times until the mixture is a coarse puree. Place the peaches in a bowl, sprinkle with lemon juice and 1/4 cup sugar. Let sit at room temperature for one half hour.

2. In another bowl, dissolve remaining 3/4 cup sugar in the cream. Add a pinch of salt and pour the cream over the peaches, stirring to combine. Let this mixture sit in the refrigerator for a minimum of two hours and up to a day before freezing it in an ice cream maker. Follow manufacturer's instructions for freezing the ice cream.

I use a Krups ice cream maker, the kind with the canister that goes in the freezer. I’ve had many kinds of ice cream freezers through the years, beginning with the hand-crank kind that required ritual layering of ice and rock salt. I found this cute ice cream maker at an estate sale for $4. I’m hoping the American Pickers will stop at my house and offer $10, then I’ll know I did well. Hey, Paul Hinrichs, betcha don’t have one of these!

Hand-cranked ice cream maker by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

You can finish reading the story here, but if you’re the kind of person, like me, who enjoys a culinary challenge, then get ready to make the coolest cupcakes you’ve ever seen - Baked Alaska cupcakes, or as I’ve come to call them, Baked Aleutians.

Baked Aleutian Cupcakes by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This is my year of Baked Alaska. I turned one out in February for the SKC Frozen Treats category, in honor of the Jamaican bobsled team of the Calgary Olympics. It was a Roasted Banana Coconut Ice Cream with Blue Mountain Coffee Ganache in Pound Cake smothered in a marshmallowy Italian Meringue. It was exquisite and yummy and a glorious pain in the patootie to make - cake, ice cream, ganache, meringue. Take a picture and eat.

Upon seeing that the category for this week was ice cream and that frozen desserts such as Baked Alaska were welcome, I emailed Francis Lam informing him that I had made my Baked Alaska for 2010, but (I’m not sure where this even came from) I might make a Baked Alaska cupcake. Just off the top of my head, I wrote that it would have to be called Baked Aleutians. Francis’ reply - if I made Baked Aleutians, that would be genius. That my friends is a gauntlet, the glove on the ground that I can’t ignore. It was time to don my apron and attack the kitchen.

The gauntlet: my oven mitt. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Baked Aleutians with Fresh Peach Ice Cream

Baked Alaska and Baked Aleutians require three elements: cake, ice cream and meringue. The cake and ice cream are baker's choice; the meringue is fairly straightforward. Here's how to put it together:

1. For one dozen cupcakes, you will need pound cake baked in muffin tins with paper liners. After they are baked, scoop out a small portion of the filling so the ice cream has a cup to hold it.

2. Scoop of ice cream. I used Fresh Peach Ice Cream for a dreamy taste of Georgia summer.

Hollowed-out cupcakes ready for ice cream. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

3. A generous swirl of meringue. This is a glorious thing to have in one’s repertoire. Shirley Corriher’s Italian meringue from "Bakewise" is tried and true and will launch this dessert into the stratosphere.

4. You can be fancy and pipe the meringue, but I used a spoon and swirled it onto the ice cream. If you're the kind to use a pastry bag, you probably have a brulee torch on hand, too, and that does a beautiful job. The assembled cupcakes toasted in an oven set on 375° for 10 minutes.

I served the Baked Aleutians in a sea of caramel sauce.

Baked Aleutians Cupcakes with Peaches and Cream Ice Cream and Caramel Sauce by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

With special thanks to Abrawang, who left the Aleutians joke as a comment on my previous Baked Alaska story.

Buttermilk Makes It Better

Rose had me at "buttermilk!" This cake, the Buttermilk Country Cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible, is the best-textured yellow cake I have ever eaten. It is tender, just slightly crumbly, not dense like a pound cake, but buttery and sweet. I served it with orchard-fresh freestone peaches from the CSA box and a bit of sweetened whipped cream. The peaches were juicy and surprisingly tart, which is ok in my book, given the context of cake and cream.

I just happened to have a quart of Marburger whole-milk buttermilk on hand, one of my secret weapons for tender cakes and quick breads. Not every store carries it, but I find it at Publix and sometimes the Super Wal-Mart stores, and always snag a quart when I do. It is thick and creamy and has freckles in it -- tiny orange flakes that turn golden brown when used in biscuits.

If you don't have The Cake Bible, by all means, go out and get yourself a copy. There is no need to ever purchase a boxed cake mix again. The buttermilk country cake recipe alone will make your reputation as a baker.

Summer in the CSA Box

All that's missing is a swimsuit and sunscreen! Everything that means summer to me is in this week's CSA box from Farmer's Fresh:

1. Four organic peaches. Someday soon I'll tell the story of my red clay South Carolina childhood and why I get so excited about the first peaches of the summer. (and if I'm lucky enough to find Sunny Slopes, I get all teary.)

2. A pint of blackberries (goodness knows, I have enough of these growing by my driveway, but these are certainly prettier.

3. Two cute eggplant (ratatouille will be on the menu this week!)

4. A fragrant bunch o'basil.

5. An assortment of sweet peppers.

6. Two big and a half dozen small tomatoes.

7. A storage onion and its baby cousin.

I can't wait to cook with all of this incredible produce!

Supper for a Stormy Night

Tuesday Night Menu

Braised Pork Chops with Root Vegetables

Brown Rice Pilaf

Field Peas

Peach Kuchen

Peaches by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

A real thunderstorm settled over our town late this afternoon, with high winds that snapped the dry pine trees and hail that damaged cars. We were cozy in our darkened house, eating a comforting meal made special by the fresh summer vegetables and fruit. We began with my favorite pork chops, braised with carrots and potatoes and concluded with a Peach Kuchen.

The Peach Kuchen is from Beans, Greens, and Sweet Georgia Peaches by Damon Lee Fowler, a Savannah writer  whose books are packed with "must-try" recipes. I pulled "Beans, Greens," from the shelf earlier in the spring and have cooked steadily from it. The peach kuchen recipe is a custard tart with a press-in pie crust made with butter and cider vinegar. It is easy, easy and especially yummy with the dead-ripe peaches from my fruit bowl. My daughter ate two servings and plans to eat another slice for breakfast. In fact, this recipe would be perfect for a weekend breakfast, when you have the 15 minutes needed to cook the custard and 40 minutes for the kuchen to bake. The mango variation sounds nice for the winter months when we get South American mangoes.

Note: the 1 cup of sugar leads to a very sweet custard - I plan to cut the sugar by at least 1/4 cup next time. I also added a splash of vanilla to my custard.

Peach or Mango Custard Kuchen
from Beans, Greens and Sweet Georgia Peaches

by Damon Lee Fowler

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

Salt

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

4 large eggs

1 cup half and half

1 cup sugar (you may want to cut this amount)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 heaping cup peaches or mangoes, peeled, pitted and cut into cubes

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the flour, sugar and a small pinch of salt in a mixing bowl. Work in the butter until the mixture resembles cookie dough (you can do this with a pastry blender or your fingers). Work in the vinegar, then press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of an 8-inch square casserole or 9-inch round pie plate. Bake in the center of the oven until the crust is beginning to color, about 10 minutes. Remove it from the oven and reduce the temperature to 375 degrees.

2. Add water to the bottom of a double boiler. Bring the water to a simmer over medium heat. Break the eggs into a mixing bowl and beat until they are smooth. Whisk in the cream until smooth, and then stir in the sugar and a tiny pinch of salt. Transfer the custard mixture to the top half of the double boiler and place it over the simmering water. Cook, stirring constantly, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove it from the heat.

3. Spread the fruit over the crust and pour the custard over them. Bake in the center of the oven until the custard is set and the crust lightly browned, about 40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Fowler suggests using raspberries, mangoes and peaches in this dessert, as well as blackberries, blueberries and sliced strawberries.