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| Millions of Peaches! |
I had meticulously planned out the luscious, yet simple dish I wanted to try for January, however all this fell by the wayside when a kind friend offered home grown peaches! Who can resist the juicy sweetness of a peach fresh off the tree? I certainly can't! But I wasn't sent home with peaches alone, she also loaded me up with Thai basil.
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| Stunning - but what to do with it? |
I'll confess, I wasn't initially all that excited about the basil. Having never used it before my initial thoughts were Asian curries and stir frys. We don't eat a lot of curry type dishes, and while it would work well in a stir fry, I was worried about the potential heat and overwhelming aniseed flavour, which neither of us are fond of.
But inadvertently our friend had landed us with the flavour combo of the year! Who would have guessed that peaches and Thai basil went so well together? But how, you ask? Well, read on!
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| Salad! |
It's actually all Mr Carl's fault. Shortly after receiving the peaches, he suggested that we have a salad with the peaches in it. This was a dish I developed a few years back which combined pan fried pork, what ever fruit was on hand, haloumi, pan fried mushrooms and tomatoes and salad. It had been a big hit at the time, and it was a good idea to resurrect it.
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| Crispy Pork |
In honour of the Thai basil, I wanted to give the dish a bit more of an Asian feel, so I marinated the pork in some soy sauce, honey and umeshu (plum wine). I would have used sake but I was out. I then covered the pork in Japanese style bread crumbs and pan fried it. Probably I should have coated it in egg before bread crumbing it as the crumbs had a tendency to fall off, but I was out of those as well. I did manage to end up with a pork loin covered in lightly caramelised bread crumbs so I think it turned out all right in the end.
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| Sizzle! |
Setting aside the pork to rest, I pan fried the haloumi and peach slices. I'm still not sure what I like better, fresh peaches or peaches fresh from a pan! They do pack a flavour punch! These I dumped on top of some mixed lettuce leaves, baby spinach and cucumber.
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| Basil and Peach, together at last! |
In an act of happy chance, I sprinkled finely sliced Thai basil into the salad just after I had added the warm peaches and the heat of the peaches brought out the flavour of the basil! The next time I made it, I made sure to repeat the process!
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| Salad dressing |
The final part of the cooking was to pan fry some shallots, tomatoes and onions. When this had caramelised a little I added a splash (slug) of verjuice, although white wine would have worked just as well. This essentially created the salad dressing. I had also toasted some croutons to give the salad some crunch and soak up juices.
All that remained was to toss in the tomato mixture, slice up the pork and toss that in and add the croutons. A final toss of the salad and dinner was served!
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| Dinner is served! |
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| Because you can never have enough peaches! |
And just in case you thought I wasn't quite consistent with the spirit of the challenge, what with revamping an existing dish, I also through together a peach crumble.
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| Peaches, ready for crumble |
Admittedly I had made crumbles as a kid, but never with peaches. And I'm pretty sure that I never made a crumble with a mix of almond meal, flour, brown sugar, butter and shredded coconut before either. The crumble base was just sliced peaches sprinkled with brown sugar and a splash of marsala. Yum!
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| Luscious Figs (photo c/ Jill Gillmore) |
I haven't been the only one busy in the kitchen this past month either. Jill has been taking inspiration from the garden to create roses out of strawberries (awesome for Valentines day I'm guessing). She also had to show off her local grown figs, which I had to leave behind as I was on my bike and had a long way to go!
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| By any other name . . . (photo c/ Jill Gillmore) |
