peach

Beer Sangria

23.07.2013 14 Comments

The first cocktail ever invented was a beer cocktail. Although the term cocktail will need to be defined as "a beverage made by mixing two or more alcoholic liquids" to come to that conclusion, and legions of cocktail snobs will stand up to debate that with me, I firmly defend the beer cocktail as being the spark that ignited a cultural inferno.

It was the early 1600’s and rum had just been discovered on sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean, after what I’m assuming wasn’t much more than a school-yard dare, when workers decided to taste the fermented mixture of water and molasses. It was such an instant success it quickly became an accepted form of currency.

Sailors were given a "rum ration" on long voyages (which gave rise to the popular pairing of pirates and bottles of rum, yo-ho-ho). As a way to extend those rations, they began to mix rum with beer, water, sugar, and whatever else they could find. They called this charming mixture of beer, rum, and whatever: Grog. Although the hangover-inducing thought of that might not sound so appealing, it’s definitive proof that beer mixology isn’t a new phenomenon.

In fact, beer mixology predates liquor mixology.

At the time, it was out of necessity, beer was cheaper and more abundant than other liquors so it made economic sense. These days, craft beer has a database of flavors that no other liquor can touch.

From caramel and molasses to grass and apricots, this is booze that makes sense to mix into your cocktails.

It’s not about improving beer, it’s about improving the cocktail.

Beer Sangria

Print Recipe

Prep Time 5

Total Time 5

Servings 4 servings

Ingredients

1 cup peach nectar I used Kerns
2 ounces fresh lemon juice
2 ounces simple syrup
4 ounces Pisco Reservado
2 cups frozen peaches
24 ounces summer style ale see note

Instructions

In a large pitcher stir together the peach nectar, lemon juice, simple syrup and Pico. Refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.
Add the peaches and beer, serve immediately.

Notes

Beer: A lot of the new summer release beers will work really well for this, look for a beer with notes of citrus, apricots, peaches, or basil.

Pisco: Pisco Reservado is a liquor made in the winemaking regions of Peru and Chili, a brandy made from wine grapes. Most liquor store will carry it, call around to find some in your area.

Peaches: You can cut and freeze your own peaches or you can buy them frozen. Using frozen peaches instead of ice will help to avoid a watered down pitcher of booze.

Grilled Peach Ice Cream

11.07.2013 26 Comments

I’m really hard on myself, I’ve told you that before. I’m a nothing-is-ever-good-enough kind of person. Lately, my photos have been in my line of fire when it comes to Stuff I’m Not Good Enough At. I can’t figure it out, why the light is never that beautiful, why the images aren’t compelling enough, why the heck I can NEVER master the over head shot. By the way, this all drives my husband crazy, because in the Grand Tradition of Amazing Husbands, he thinks I’m the most talented person in the world, let’s not disrupt that delusion, I sort of like it.

So, one of my tangible fixation for resolving at least some of the issues I have with my sub par photos was this slightly deranged idea that I NEEDED a reclaimed wood table. I NEEDED it (#firstworldproblems). I priced this absolutely necessary item, and in the Los Angeles area, this need could be fulfilled for the low, low price of about $2000. My aforementioned Amazing Husband disagreed that this was an actual need after seeing the price tag for such items.

I couldn’t stop thinking about such a need, and scoured Craigslist for the possibility that I might be able to pick one up. But as luck might have it, an old house in my neighborhood started to get torn apart. It was a 1920’s California Bungalow and the sight of it being ripped apart made me a little heartsick.

As I drove home one night, I noticed a stack of gorgeous antique wood, full of age and scars that I couldn’t get out of my mind. After dinner I pulled on a pair of old boots, waited for the workmen to leave for the day, and began to dig the gorgeous planks out of the trash piles.

I had two very specific feelings about this slightly insane venture of trespassing to dig through a trash pile, at dusk, in East Los Angeles. First, I felt like a crazy person (and clearly an amateur who didn’t think to bring gloves to dig through construction waste and old wood) as I tried to ignore the freaked out looks from passers by. Second, that I was heroically saving this amazing wood from the fate of a land fill (also slightly insane that I was heroizing myself for something so selfish).

After I got home with Heroically Aquired Gorgeous Wood, I used actual real life and potentially dangerous power tools to nail it together, saw off the excess and I then had myself a Personally Reclaimed Wood (prop) Table. And posted the picture of my slightly insane venture on Instagram.

Although I’m fairly certain that my newly acquired fake table did not improve my photos, I’m still happy to have him in my house instead of a landfill.

Grilled Peach Ice Cream

Ingredients

1 cup sugar
2 cups cream
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks
4 yellow peaches cut in half, pit removed

Grape seed or canola oil

Instructions

In a sauce pan off heat whisk together the sugar, cream, milk, vanilla, and egg yolks until very well combined.
Place the saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spatula.
Transfer to an airtight container (strain through a fine mesh strainer if any lumps were created), refrigerate until chilled, about 4 hours and up to 24.
Preheat the grill to medium high heat (alternately, a cast iron grill pan can be used).
Brush the cut side of the peaches with oil. Place, cut side down, on a hot grill. Close the lid and allow to grill until deep grill marks appear, about 4 minutes.
Remove from grill and gently peel the skin away (should remove easily).
Chop the peaches.
Add the peaches and the ice cream base to your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Freeze until set, about 2 hours.
Remove from freezer about 5 minutes prior to serving to make scooping easier.

Apricot Peaches and Cream Turnovers

30.04.2013 65 Comments

In honor of moms everywhere, and the upcoming Mothers Day holiday, I’m hosting some giveaways this week with a Mothers Day brunch theme!

If you are a coffee drinker, you need to get a French press. This is the best way to make coffee at home, and it doesn’t get any easier. You get an amazing coffee-house flavor, and it doesn’t even need electricity. I fell in love with French press coffee in Europe and I’ve used them ever since.

This gorgeous version from Le Creuset is available at Sur La Table, and as I’ve told you before, I’m a huge fan of Sur La Table.

For a gorgeous, thoughtfully stocked, kitchen store, their prices are outstanding (remember that marble rolling board? Shockingly inexpensive!) and the store has everything I’m looking for, I’d take this over shoe shopping any day (ok, most days).

Sur La Table and I are giving away this fabulous Le Creuset French Press (that I adore) and some amazing Sarahbeth’s Peach Apricot jam that has quickly become a favorite of mine. The ingredients are amazingly simple: sugar, water, peaches, apricots. The simplicity of the recipe puts the focus on the amazing fruit. Try turning over the jar of jam at your local super market and you’ll know why I’m so thrilled with this jam. Most commercial jam is full of dozens of unpronounceable ingredients, and even food dye (why the heck does my apricot jam need to be oranger?!). Sarahbeth’s jam is amazing, I’m a fan of the honest ingredients and incredibly huge flavors of real life fruit.

Because this jam is so gorgeously simple, I wanted a recipe that was simple as well. Something easy to throw together for your Mothers Day brunch, but that will show off that fabulous jam.

Just roll out a sheet of puff pastry and cut it into squares.

Fill those squares with a little sweetened cream cheese and jam (the stuff that breakfast dreams are made of).

Seal it up to keep all the good stuff inside.

Brush it will a glaze made from jam and a little water to thin it.

Bake it to golden brown perfection.

Apricot Peaches and Cream Turnovers

Yield: Yield: 6 Pastries

Ingredients

4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
¼ cup Apricot jam
2 tbs jam plus 1 tbs water for glaze
pearl or sanding sugar (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400.
In a small bowl, stir together the cream cheese and the powdered sugar, set aside.
Roll out the puff pastry on a lightly floured surface. Cut into 6 equal sized squares.
Add 1 tablespoon sweetened cream cheese towards one corner of the squares, leaving about ½ inch edge empty. Top with 1 tablespoon jam.
Moisten the edges with water, fold the puff pastry over into a triangle.
Use a fork to seal the edges, transfer to a baking sheet that has been covered with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
In a small bowl, wisk together the 2 tbs jam and 1 tbs water. Brush each pastry with the glaze, sprinkle with pearl or sanding sugar if desired.
Bake at 400 for 15 to 18 minutes or until golden brown.

Coconut Cornmeal Shrimp With Jalapeno Peach Jam

03.09.2012 17 Comments

I’ve had a busy week, and my body has decided to request that I slow down.

On Friday, I was asked to do a cooking segment on CBS news in Los Angeles. I’ve spent the week preparing. My husband helped me run through the segment in the evenings, and for an entire week my drive home consisted of me practicing my talking points, out loud, looking like a crazy person, on an LA freeway. It all seemed to work, the segment went well:

The Beeroness Cooks on CBS

As soon as I started my drive home from the studio, I started to crash. The next morning I lay in bed as my incredible husband got up with Tater, and I was able to sleep until the late, late hour of 8:45. In Mom Time, that’s pretty close to sleeping until noon. As I lay in bed, trying to pull myself together and trick myself into thinking I’m not actually sick, I watched this, this and this, and laughed so hard I think it worked. Maybe it’s true what they say about laughter and that whole "Best Medicine" thing.

And on Thursday I leave for the Foster Farms Cook-Off. I’ll be competing against 4 other cooks for $1,000 and a trip to Napa for the Cook Off Finals with a prize of $10,000.

Wish me luck! I’ll be posting on twitter and instagram as the contest goes along.

And now, the recipe. I bought a huge bag of Masa to make corn tortillas with, and if you have never made corn tortillas, you really, really need to . They’re so good, nothing like those cardboard disks they sell at the store, and they take about 5 minutes. The flavor is so good, I’ve been throwing the corn flour into everything, I’m totally in love with it. And the Jalapeno Peach Jam I also used on pork chops. So Good.

Coconut Cornmeal Shrimp With Jalapeno Peach Jam

Ingredients

For The Jam:

3 cups peaches, skin removed, chopped
2 tbs fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
1 jalapeno, stem and seeds removed, diced
1 tsp cornstarch

For The Shrimp:

1 can coconut milk
2 lbs raw shrimp, shell and tail removed
1 cup Masa Harina
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
1/4 cup oil

Instructions

Add the raw shrimp and coconut milk to a bowl. Chill in the fridge for about 45 minutes while you make the jam.
In a pot over medium high heat, add all of the jam ingredients. Stirring occasionally, allow to simmer (not boil) until thick, and the peaches have broken down, about 45 minutes. Smash peached with a potato masher until a jam like consistency is reached. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a bowl, combine the masa, coconut, salt, pepper and pinch cayenne. One at a time, remove the shrimp from the coconut milk and allow to drain a bit before adding to the cornmeal mixture. Coat the shrimp well in the corn meal mixture.
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the shrimp and cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side.
Remove from heat. You can either top the shrimp with the jam or serve the jam as a dipping sauce.

Raspberry Peach Deep Dish Pie

07.09.2011 8 Comments

I wrote another article for Honest Cooking. I wrote about this deep dish pie, because I love it so much. The crust is the best part, and making it deep dish adds more of the good stuff, oh, and the filling too. Also, deep dish pies are really impressive. They stand on their own, outside of a pie pan and look like a baked-goods force to be reckoned with. Next time you make a pie from scratch, forget the pie pan and reach for your spring form pan.

Deep Dish Raspberry Peach Pie:

For the Crust:

1 batch Perfect Pie Crust

For the Filling:

1/2 cup flour

2 tbs cornstarch

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

6 cups peaches: peeled, pitted and sliced

4 cups fresh raspberries

Once your pie dough is completed, chilled and ready to go, roll out one disk (about half of the total recipe) so that it will sit in your spring form pan with about a 1 inch overhang. Fold in half, then in half again to form a triangle. Gently move to the pan with the point of the triangle in the dead center.

Unfold and smooth any rips or tears with your fingers. Set in the fridge to chill until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 375.

In a separate bowl, add the flour, cornstarch, salt, and sugar, then whisk to combine.

Add the peaches and raspberries and toss to coat.

Add the fruit to the spring form pan that is now lined with pie dough. Roll out your remaining dough and place it on the top of the pie, using the same method to move as you did with your bottom dough layer. Using your fingers, squeeze the top and bottom layers of the crust together around the edge of the pan. Make a few slits in the top of the pie dough to release steam. If you want to cut out a shape, as shown below, do so prior to moving your dough.

Bake at 375 for 50-60 minutes or until the top is a golden brown.

Somehow, in the course of my very rushed Deep Dish photo shoot, my peach slices went missing.

I’m not entirely sure who’s belly they ended up in, but either way, a pretty healthy snack.

Miniature Deep Dish Peach Pies

11.07.2011 6 Comments

Clearly, I like things in miniature form. Not only are they just plain adorable, it provides some much needed portion control. If I have a pie, just sittin in the fridge, I have a strong temptation to constantly cut off a sliver if I’m in the vicinity. If I just have these small versions, I’m less tempted and I’ve tricked my brain into thinking I had much more than I actually did. I just ate a WHOLE pie! Well, a pie the size of a cupcake, but still. Plus, how great are these for dinner parties?

Mini Peach Pies

Pie Dough:

(adapted from Fool Proof Pie Dough, Cooks illustrated 2007)

3 cups of all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbs sugar

10 tbs butter (1 stick, plus 2 tbs), cut into cubes

1/2 cup shortening

1/4 cup vodka

1/4 cup cold water

Peach Filling:

4 1/2 cups of diced peaches

1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbs unsalted butter

1 tbs honey

1/4 cup lemon juice

Sour Cream Filling:

2/3 cup Sour Cream

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

I seems to make a lot of pie dough. I love it, and after years of research and practice, I am loyal to the homemade version and it’s vast superiority over the store bought stuff. If you plan ahead, it really doesn’t take much time at all.

First, food processors are great at getting the job done as quickly as possible, and as previously mentioned on this blog, the more you mess with dough the tougher it becomes. So break out that food processor and add 2 cups of the flour, salt and sugar and give it a quick pulse until it’s combined.

Add the cubes of butter and the shortening and pulse until combined, about 1 1/2 minutes.

Add the remaining flour and process until it’s all combined. Move to a bowl, add your water and vodka with a spatula. Your dough will be very moist, but you can add a bit of flour if it is too moist to hold together. Then split into two evenly sized disks and wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours. If you need to, this can be made up to three days in advance, just store the plastic wrapped disks in a large zip lock bag.

In a pot over medium heat, combine the peaches, butter, powdered sugar, salt, honey and lemon juice. Stir frequently, allowing to simmer until reduced and thickened. About 15-20 minutes.

In a bowl, combine the sour cream, sugar, egg and vanilla and stir until combined.

Roll out your cold dough on a flowered surface. Cut circles large enough to fit into your muffin tins, with a bit of an over hang. I found that for mine, 4 inch worked the best. My largest biscuit cutter was 3 inches so I used a wine glass as my pie dough cutter.

Spray your muffin tins with butter cooking spray and then place your dough circles inside the wells, making sure there is a tiny bit of overhang.

Poke holes in the bottom of your dough and then fill with about 2 tsp of the sour cream mixture and then two tbs of the peaches mixture.

Cut out top circles for your mini pies using a 3 inch biscuit cutter (or a size appropriate for the muffin tins you are using). I had a cute little tiny cookie cutter in the shape of a star that I used for the top. You can just cut slits in the top if you don’t have a tiny cutter. I have also found that the lid of a chapstick tube (cleaned, of course) makes a great tiny circle cutter in a pinch.

Place your top circles in place and pinch the edges together.

In a small bowl, wisk one egg with a fork. Brush on top of your pies and then sprinkle with sugar.

Place your mini pies in the fridge for 20 minutes to all to chill.

Preheat your oven to 350. Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until the tops are a golden brown.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Drunken Southern Scones: Bourbon Peach

23.05.2011 14 Comments

I came across these adorable small little white peaches at my local market. Beautiful, firm, fragrant and adorable. I walked around the store muttering to myself, “Peaches, Peaches, what goes with peaches…” Ginger? Too trite. Blueberry? Too expected. Tequila? Hmmm…too “Spring Break Hangover.” Bourbon just seemed to fit the bill. I love cooking with bourbon, the sweetness is a perfect complement to the peaches. The vessel for my bourbon soaked peaches? Scones. Drunken Southern Scones.

If you don’t have the adorable small versions, a regular size peach is fine. I leave the skin on, but feel free to take it off if that’s what you like. While cutting these little guys, the peach seeds broke in half more often than not. Out came the mellon baller, a perfect sollution

Preheat oven to 375.

Dice two cups of peaches

In a pan, over medium heat, add 4 tbs butter, 1 cup sugar and your diced peaches

Cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes. You will know that the peaches will be ready once the sauce leaves a track behind when you drag your spoon through it

Then add a 1/4 cup of bourbon (I like Buffalo Trace) and stir over medium heat until the sauce thickens again, about 3 minutes

At some point while the peaches are cooking, start the dry ingredients. 3 cups of flour, 2 1/2 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, whisk together in a bowl and form a well in the middle.

After the peaches have cooled, add them to the middle of the well you have created in the dry ingredients,

stir together until well combined with the dry ingredients. It will be flaky and crumbly. Add 1/3 cup Greek yogurt and stir until a soft dough forms.

Mound the dough onto a floured surface and form a log that is about 14 inches long by 1 1/2 inches tall

Cut into 6 to 7 equal sized slices

then cut the slices diagnoaly to form two triangles for each slice

Bake in the oven at 375 for about 12-15 minutes or until goldeny brown.

Mix 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tbs lemon juice and 1/2 tsp water in bowl

Once the scones have cooled, drizzle glaze on top and allow to set.