I happen to live 20-30 miles from Ruston, Louisiana, home of the Squire Creek Louisiana Peach Festival . Ruston Peaches are very well-known in these parts. Heck, Emeril even has a peach pie recipe that is named for these peaches. I happen to have a great nearby source for them. An orange warehouse that has citrus in the winter, and peaches right now. I bought a 12 pound bag of them the other day. I have never liked peach flavoring in anything. I have never even been a big fresh peach fan, probably because I preferred mine peeled. When I bit into one of these this year I was converted. They are sweet tart and have a wonderful fragrance and texture. I had to move quickly and put them to use before my husband ate them all.
First I made a peach/blueberry cobbler pie out of my favorite PIE cookbook. Cobbler pie you ask? Basically the authors wife wanted him to include an apple cobbler in his Apple Pie Perfect cookbook. He explained that a cobbler did not belong in a pie cookbook. She countered with the idea of adding a bottom pie crust to the cobbler, that this would make it a cobbler pie. He agreed, and enjoyed the combination enough to include this variation in his next book. I expected it to be cobbler looking on top, however when it came out of the oven it had become a solid cake-like layer. Oh well, still good.
With my remaining peaches I wanted some peach ice cream. This is always a problem because I prefer Philadelphia-Style ice cream. I just really dislike the idea of custardy ice cream. All those egg yolks can cloud the flavor of fruits. I had found a good recipe in an issue of Gourmet. I lost it though, I can't find it in any of my back issues. So I created my own by combining several recipes. I used the fruit technique from Cook's Illustrated. You cook the peeled and cut up fruit with sugar and a pinch of salt. After about five minutes the juices are released. You strain the juice and add it to the ice cream base. Then you combine the fruit pieces with a little vodka to prevent it from getting too icy. When the ice cream is almost done churning you add the fruit pieces back in.
As far as the base, I used the eggless recipe in Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Dessert Book. I also added a little lemon juice and vanilla to it as well.
I made some beautiful, if difficult to do properly, Transparent Maple Tuiles from Dorie Greenspan's new book to serve alongside. The ice cream turned out better than I'd hoped. The texture was very creamy and smooth. Not icy at all, however it was almost too creamy. It left a little coating on the tongue. Justin disagreed, but... Also I would have liked a little stronger peach flavor. So I will not give the recipe until I do some more tweaking.
looks good to me and now if you can duplicate the taste of the ice cream they sell at the festival that would be perfect :)
Posted by: Chicken Fried Gourmet | June 11, 2007 at 06:29 PM