There is the most mouthwatering smell coming from the oven right now. Remember those peaches Don brought home from his friend's tree? Remember how they sat on my kitchen table almost a week then I shoved them in the refrigerator? I found out the other day that I should not have done that. I turned to ask.com to find an outstanding recipe for peach cobbler and found the following:
So how can you tell if a
peach will ripen sweetly when they are rock-hard at the store? I will let you in on my little secret. Look at the stem end of each peach. If it is red to the stem, it will ripen in a few days and be sweet left on your kitchen counter (don’t refrigerate fresh peaches). If the stem is yellow, put it back. Oh yes, use your nose, too; you should be able to smell a fruity aroma. No smell, put it back. This method also works for nectarines.
If you are lucky enough to be in peach growing country, no doubt the peaches will be available tree-ripened and at their best. So after you have made that delectable peach pie, shortcake, and ice cream, you’ll probably want to keep some peaches for later on in the year.
To freeze peaches, you need to plunge them in boiling water, then chill in ice water. Peel, stone and thickly slice. They go brown in freezing, so you’ll need powdered ascorbic acid to keep their color. It’s not rocket science; just a crushed 500 mg. tablet of vitamin C! Dissolve it in water and toss the peaches with it, then pack the slices in sealable airtight bags or containers.
After the early fall, fresh peaches never are good again until the next summer. Their texture is off, and even with my secret, they just don’t taste peachy. So my advice: savor the season while you can!
I just now typed in "what is the propper way to store fresh peaches?" and was led to a site called stilltasty.com. I have added the link to this post and it is supposed to open in a separate window when clicked on. It worked when I tested it so I am hoping it will if anyone else does.
Well, heck, looking at the info apparently I did preserve the peaches properly. it says once peaches are ripe place in a plastic bag and refrigerate. Granted I put mine in a walmart bag, but it was plastic and I did put the ripe peaches in the fridge. Ok, well maybe more knowledge will come later.
Are you asking, "why does a chef need to look for a recipe? why doesn't she have cookbooks and why is this knowlede in her head?"
First of all I have tons of cookbooks, everything from international cooking (my specialty) to pastry books that tell you how to make croissants from scratch ( a very tasty, labor intensive process involving rolling pounds of butter into huge sheets of dough, folding them into thirds then refrigerating for several hours before repeating the process 3 more times)...just in case you care.
I am finding that i am turning more and more to the world wide web to get info on everything. It seems I am in such a hurry to find the answers I get impatient and just point and click. It would have taken me hours to find the recipe I was looking for if I was to look through all my cookbooks. Well maybe not I am pretty familiar with them and I have my old standbys. I was just too lazy to go out to the washhouse where they are being stored and climb the step stool to get them out of the cabinet they are stored 3 deep in.
It kind of saddens me that I do not take the time to go to my books because I love the feel of a book in my hand. Like I love writing letters. I think letter writing is a lost art. I really only know a couple people who still do it.
These days we are reading books on kindle (well I am not because I fit in the category of the 'working poor' meaning i work 2 or 3 jobs often and still don't make enough to pay the bills. If it was not for Don's generosity not demanding that I help with more bills I would be working 2 jobs. I have gotten many applications to fill out for a second job, but everytime Don sees them he says "now we will really never see each other." I agree so I give in hoping that we will indeed strengthen our relationship by having time together rather than strain it because I don't feel I am pulling my weight financially. I don't buy nearly the books I used to buy nor do I read as much as I would like. What I have to do is cook to survive and it has become a hobby so I am lucky that I get to do the work I love at work and at home.
So back to my cobbler recipe...most likely if I would have just consulted betty crocker or better homes and gardens or food for 50 or any of the tons of books I have I would not have had to cobble together a recipe to get what I wanted. What I ended up using for a recipe is a conglomeration of 3 or maybe more recipes. I knew what i wanted the cobbler to look like and taste like. I knew I like the taste of the oats and brown sugar streusel topping in apple crisp, but oddly there are very few peach crisp, cobbler recipes. I don't know if that is because people don't like peach cobbler or if most people don't have access to fresh peaches (why this would be I don't know since we are in the year 2012) but that was the case. One of the great things about being a chef is that I spent hours in class learning how foods react with other foods and what ingredients interact with what chemicals to make the desired effect. I have been cooking professionally for so many years that I can picture what I want to taste and then I can find recipes to use as maps to create the finished product. I wish I could say it is always successful, but I do always learn something everytime.
I used to get crazy frustrated when I would tell my grandmother I wanted her recipe for something. she would say, "Oh its just a little of this and a little of that til it tastes how I want it to taste." Technically she was right, I understood that, but I wanted to know how much of this and that it took to make it taste how she wanted because I wanted it to taste like hers. I feel like once our grandparents leave this earth, their ways of life, including the cooking, will go with them and be forgotten. My grandparents were newly weds when the depression started the women in that generation had very little to cook with. They could take dirt and add some flour and water and some salt and pepper and make sunday dinner. This is the food I miss. The food that she continued to cook in better days when all us grandkids would stay the summers with her and learn how to process food from the garden and learning the confidence to trust my own tastebuds combined with the experience of my 47 years of life. All of this is what has brought me to Kim's Kobbled Kobbler.
KYM'S KOBBLED KOBBLER
About 14 small peaches - clean and drop into a pan of boiling water for 2 minutes (no longer), then plunge into a bowl of ice water. I let them sit about 10 minutes in the ice water while I prepared the streusel topping. I don't think it matters if you peel them right away or not. I do know that no knife or peeler was needed i just took my thumb and ran it over the loose skin to make a hole then the sking practially came off in one piece... easy as pie. Slice the peaches into bite-sized slices, remove the pits and any of the hard center part that is going to be hard to chew. This would probably be a good time to toss some ascorbic acid (vitamin c) or fruit fresh into some water and then soak the fruit in it while slicing, but I did not do this. I did put some lemon juice over the peaches and tossed before adding the sugar and cinnamon. Put the peaches in a pan with 1 cup of sugar and 1/8 cup of flour and 1 tsp of cinnamon. The original recipe called for nutmeg, but I hate nutmeg so I wanted the taste of cinnamon. Bring this mixture to a boil over medium high heat then reduce heat and simmer for about 5 miutes. pour this into a greased pan and put the streusel topping over it. Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes. I read 400 degrees in one recipe for 15 mins. then I got confused and baked mine at 350 for 35 mins. I think the topping could look better, but it looks pretty amazing anyway. The important thing is that the topping is golden brown and the peaches bubbly.
STREUSEL TOPPING: 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 Cup rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 stick of unsalted butter, cut into pea sized pieces ( I don't know why it has to be cut into these pieces because I used my hands to mix everything and i broke it all up with my fingers into crumbs)
1/2 cup sliced almonds ( I did not use these; most recipes i found called for 1 cup chopped pecans. Nuts are way out of my budget right now so i left them out)
1 to 2 tablespoons water (I didn't use this, not sure if my topping would be more round and crumb like if i did. I didn't leave it out on purpose, just forgot to put it in).
MMMMMM! Just finished a bowl of the kobbler. It is amazing. It would be even better with some cold vanilla ice cream or whipped topping, but since it is still warm and sweet and peachy... it is pretty much as perfect as it can
get without any accompanyment.
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