oh peaches, where art thou?

So at Jeff's crazy cool workplace, last week there was a Farmer's market in the cafeteria. oh no, I'm sorry, I was just fact checking and apparently, the Farmer's market was on the balcony of the cafeteria. You would think that these things wouldn't surprise me anymore, but they still do. Now, I misunderstood this at first when he told me. I thought he meant that his cafeteria food was all made fresh from Farmer's market ingredients (like the "theme" for the day), but no, there was an actual market in which you shopped (but yes, they had to pay with real money) for produce and what not.

Anyway, I was out to lunch (i.e. the gym) when Jeff called me to ask if I wanted him to buy anything. So he took it upon himself to decide what looked good and what we needed. What he ended up with was about 4 pounds of peaches (but it was only $3). That's it. Just peaches. And a whole lot of them. I however, did not know how many peaches he had actually bought. (not that I'm complaining)

So this was last Wednesday. The peaches did not arrive home on Wednesday, because we were going out to dinner and he came straight from work to dinner. Thursday he didn't bring them home because he walked home from work. So on Friday he had to bring them home. However, he also received a 24" monitor from work that he had to bring home as well. Instead of taking a cab (which I understand because we were going to the UES that night and destined to be taking a cab both ways), he took the subway. Just imagine how big a 24" monitor is and then imagine how big the box for it is. HUGE.

To be able to bring the peaches home, he tied the plastic bag onto his computer bag (his computer bag is only big enough for his computer, not even room in there for a power cable). This arrangement was such that the plastic bag hit his side/leg every time he took a step.

So Friday he arrived home with mostly bruised peaches and monitor in tow. That's when I realized how many peaches we were dealing with. This was going to be no small task using them up (especially because I knew the chances were slim to none that he would eat the peaches on their own, the expectation was very clear that something would be made with them).

So here arrived problem #2 ... cooking/baking with peaches. Ugh. Of course pie pops into everyone's head. But peach pie (and every other peach recipe under the sun) calls for peeled peaches. double ugh. what an unnecessary ridiculous step in cooking. removing the skin. triple ugh.

I've also been in this situation before, where I think to myself, it can't be THAT bad if I just leave the skin on. But it's weird and gross every time. I don't know what it is. But when you eat a piece of pie, you don't want extra peach skin hanging out of your mouth attached to the peach piece.

After two days of half-hearted searching (and throwing away about three peaches a day because they were bruised and going bad), I stumbled across a recipe free-form fruit tart, that oddly enough, did not call for peeling the peaches. Especially strange since essentially it was a pie crust in which you mounded up peaches and blueberries in the middle of and folded the sides of the crust over "in a rustic manner."

Before I had to throw out all the peaches, I figured I'd give it a try. My kitchen, of course, is about 600 degrees when I'm making dinner, so I was sure the pie crust would be a disaster. Especially when I was rolling out the dough and there were only three bits of butter visible to the eye (it should be "peppered" so to speak, with bits of butter so that it can rise properly and be flaky).

I piled on the fruit, threw it in the oven and set the timer for an hour. Of course, what I happened to forget was that I had halved the recipe (I'm sure I've written about this problem before that I have with halving recipes). Luckily, however, I was also cooking our chicken for dinner in the oven at the same time. I went in to check in on the chicken when the tart was supposed to be about half way finished (imagine that), and found the peaches lightly charred, the crust golden brown and the blueberries bubbling away. I immediately pulled it out, but I was sure that it was yet more peaches destined for the garbage.

After scarfing down dinner, I turned to dessert. I had Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream in the freezer, so I knew that dessert would be recoverable if I piled on enough ice cream. To my great surprise, the crust was tender and flaky, the peaches and blueberries perfectly sweetened and no weird peach skin issues. I still managed to pile on the ice cream, but I mostly ate it separately, the free form tart was so tasty!

I got the recipe from Cooks Illustrated, but it was really a basic pie crust in which you piled on fruit (I'm not sure how well really juicy fruits would fare, since there's no thickener or anything), and gave the whole thing a sprinkling of sugar. a perfect way to use up peaches without having to take off the skin. Next time I'm going to advise Jeff to both diversify his purchases and maybe not wait three days to bring the goodies home. either way though, this time it worked out pretty well for us.