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Ginger peach sorbet

ginger peach sorbet

It’s muggy and warm in my home office as I sit typing, so it’s hard for me to believe that summer may finally be drawing to a close. I’m not nostalgic and weepy about it. I cannot wait for the cooler weather. I live for autumn. Yes, even last autumn, which was one of the hardest seasons I’ve ever faced in my life, was still glorious for its weather. The crisp tang in the air as the fall breezes undercut summer’s heat. The turning of the leaves.

So far the only sign I’m seeing is that the sun is setting noticeably earlier. It’s grayer now than it was last week at this time. Granted, part of the reason is that the skies are overcast. The forecast has been threatening, or perhaps promising, rain for hours now, but it keeps refusing to come. The air remains dense and warm, and my husband cannot stop sneezing. I don’t know what pollens Hurricane Irene washed up here last week but it’s high time they went away again.

The selection at the neighborhood Greenmarket this past Saturday had changed, but I think that was less a function of the coming fall and more a result of the devastation the hurricane wrought upstate and in New Jersey. Many farms lost all their crops; anything topped by floodwater was automatically deemed unfit for consumption. Plants were damaged or killed, limiting the amount of new growth and harvest. The stalls on Saturday had a much slimmer selection than usual (granted, I didn’t arrive until closer to 1 pm, so the earlier risers may have had more to choose from). Still, I found enough to meet our needs for the coming week: tomatoes, eggplant, cilantro, bell peppers.

I looked last for fruit and found peaches, $1 per pound, and not looking bad. I loaded a bag, and thought. You can’t exactly stock up on peaches; they go bad too fast. Their rich sweetness is their undoing. But then I thought, I haven’t made ice cream all summer, and peach sorbet may be just the thing.

PeachSorbet2

I adapted a recipe from the booklet that came with the ice cream maker. The recipe was actually for strawberry sorbet, but I assumed the proportions were basically sound: 3 pounds of chopped fruit, 3 cups of water and 1 1/2 cups of sugar cooked into a syrup, 3 tablespoons lemon juice. As I was measuring the sugar for the syrup I wondered if the fact that peaches have a more unalloyed sweetness than strawberries might result in a too-sugary dessert. This gave me the bright idea to slice a couple of rounds of ginger root into the pan to infuse into the syrup.

Making the syrup is simple: you bring the water and sugar (and ginger) to a boil and let it simmer a bit. The recipe says “until the sugar is dissolved,” but I had stirred well and the sugar was dissolved before the mixture came near the boiling point, so I let it bubble gently for about 5 minutes while I finished the dishes. Then I set it aside to cool. When it was cool enough to work with, I chopped peaches, peeling off the thickest of the skin but mostly leaving it in place, then pureed the chunks. I put everything into the ice cream maker canister and stirred well, then set it churning.

PeachSorbet6

And, voila: ginger peach sorbet. It’s very refreshing. The ginger isn’t strong–just a hint that takes off the sugary edge and lets the full flavor of the peaches shine through. A fitting end to summer indeed. Now if it would just rain already.

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