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Stone Fruits

By Carole Kotkin

Peaches with a blush of red on their cheeks, golden apricots, deep purple plums and burgundy red cherries are beckoning from the fruit stands and produce counters just as they do every year at this time. They are known as stone fruits because they contain a single pit or stone, instead of a core with multiple seeds, as in apples and pears. These fruits are the nobility of summer fruit, their remarkable lushness perfuming dishes with the aroma of a flower garden. Wine connoisseurs are familiar with the stone fruit fragrances found in wine. Many of these fruits are grown in regions also favorable to vineyards.

These days the quality of our fruit is outstanding and we have chefs to thank for this. About 30 years ago, young American chefs, newly graduated from culinary school and the requisite apprenticeship in France, came back home full of motivation, only to discover that cooking expertise was not enough. Superb food, these chefs found, requires superb ingredients. They challenged farmers and distributors to improve their products, and forged alliances with local farmers, insisting that fruits and vegetables be grown for flavor instead of transportability. This may be due in part to the enormous influence of Alice Waters, chef-owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, who began contracting with local gardeners to grow herbs, lettuces, vegetables and fruits for her restaurant in the early 1970's.  She set the tone for the restaurant revolution that swept the country in the 1980’s. Her “fresh from the farm” philosophy is expressed in her recent book, Chez Panisse Fruit, “For nothing is better than a fruit in its own proper season, perfectly ripened and handled with care by the people who harvest it. We couldn’t live without these farmers and foragers.”  This movement continues to flourish. Now restaurant menus list not only the ingredients of each dish, but the origins of those ingredients as well. It’s not enough to know that you’re eating peaches—you have to know which state they came from, and preferably which county and even, which farm; just like closely defined wine appellations. 

From the first sign of stone fruits in the market, a constant succession of cobblers, shortcakes, sorbets, ice creams, pies and tarts begin appearing in home and restaurant kitchens. However, stone fruits aren’t just for those with a sweet tooth. They make wonderful chutneys, salsas, and savory additions to main courses, soups, and salads. Innovative chefs are creating complex sauces based on fruits in purees, reductions and infusions. Chef/owner Cory Schreiber of Wildwood Restaurant in Portland, Oregon and author of Wildwood: Cooking from the Source in the Pacific Northwest, describes a compote to accompany wood roasted pork chop he made by combining dried cherries and fresh cherries in a mixture of Zinfandel and Port—“Zinfandel for heartiness and Port for sweetness and fruit,“ he explains. A salad at Wildwood is a lesson in how easily fruit can be transformed into a refreshing, attractive summer salad: a lovely construction of chopped cherries, duck confit and goat cheese with cherry vinaigrette. “It’s a great balance of sweet and sour in the vinaigrette, and salt in the confit and cheese, says Schreiber. Originating in Asia, cherries were found on the tables of Roman conquerors, Greek citizens and Chinese noblemen. “The first white men in America found wild cherries on the spot and developed cultivated varieties from them, and they also brought European cultivated cherries with them, “ wrote Waverley Root, author of Food.  French colonists from Normandy planted them along the Saint Lawrence River and on down into the Great Lakes area. The fruit arrived in the Pacific Northwest with a pioneer named Henderson Lewelling, who planted them in western Oregon in 1847. America’s best-known sweet cherry, the Bing, was developed on his farm in 1875. It was named for one of his Chinese workers. Modern day cherry production began in the mid-1800s in Traverse City, Michigan. Today the U.S. cherry industry produces more than 650 million pounds of tart and sweet cherries each year. Michigan grows about 75 percent of the tart cherry crop with Oregon and Washington harvesting about 60 percent of the sweet cherry crop. Other states with commercial cherry crops are Utah, Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania and California.

Chef Schreiber buys Rainier, Lambert, and Queen Anne cherries from small farmers in the Hood Valley.  “Nestled between Mount Hood and the Columbia River is the Hood River Valley with its mineral-rich blend of volcanic and sandy soils. Coupled with the dueling climates of the western Cascades and the arid eastern dessert, it’s a fruit and wine growers—and lovers—paradise, “ he explains. Weather conditions play a role in how good the fruit is. Just as it is with wine grapes, a lot of rain during the growing season almost always means tasteless fruit. On the other hand, the fruit in a dry season is usually the sweetest because the sugar is more concentrated. There are hundreds of cherry varieties. In the United States about a dozen varieties are cultivated, in three basic categories: dark sweet, like Bing and Schmidt; light sweet, like Royal Anne (often yellow with a pale red tinge); and sour or pie cherries, like Montmorency, which make up the bulk of the world’s harvest.

Yakima County, (almost as large as Connecticut) Washington produces more cherries than most states. It is also becoming one of the most important areas in the country for wine grapes. Thanks to some dormant volcanoes—Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, and Mount Helens—the soil here is largely volcanic and rich in nitrogen. The melting snows from the mountaintops provide land much needed moisture.  Chef John Sarich, author of John Sarich’s Food & Wine of the Pacific Northwest, and Culinary Director at Chateau Ste. Michele, just outside Seattle, takes the 3 hour drive to Yakima to buy cherries from farmers’ roadside stands, “I buy Bing, Lambert and Queen Anne cherries as big as ping-pong balls. These “two-bite cherries” crack when you bite into them. Most of these cherries are exported to Japan where they sell for as much as $1.00 a piece.”  Though there are some classic specialties featuring cherries, such as duck Montmorency, today’s menus are more varied. Gamy meats like venison and squab are being paired with cherries, and the wine flavors of the cherries themselves often are enhanced with wine. Chef Sarich prepares braised rabbit with Merlot and cherries. “I add the cherries at the very end of the cooking time, so they don’t fall apart, “ he notes. He writes in Food and Wine of the Pacific Northwest,  “Cherries have a natural affinity for our Meritage wines produced in the same region. These robust wines are packed with concentrated flavors and aromas of dark cherry, with notes of coffee, mint, oak and spice that highlight the cherries and herbs in this dish.”  The great abundance of stone fruits leads to a kind of improvisational cooking—simple and straightforward.  “My grandfather used to refrigerate wine glasses filled with fruit wedges and topped with zinfandel before dinner. During the time in the refrigerator the fruit and wine flavors marry, and the combination is irresistible,” Sarich recalls.

The homey old-fashioned appeal of the peach—from pies and cobblers to cakes and ice cream— contradicts its exotic journey to the American table. Peaches originated in China, where they have has been cultivated since earliest recorded time. The Chinese believed the peach imparted mythical powers of immortality. Persian traders discovered the peach and took it home. After Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia, the peach eventually found its way west into Roman orchards. In the 16th century Spanish explorers brought the peach to America, and the Indians quickly adopted it, planting peaches as they migrated through various parts of the country. Peaches are now grown throughout the United States, from California, South Carolina and Georgia (the leading states in commercial peach production) to Colorado, Michigan and New Jersey. Nearly 2,000 hybrid varieties exist. As for nectarines, Marilyn Dolan, consumer program director for the California Tree Fruit Agreement, based in Reedley, California, says, “these are actually a distinctive fruit that differs from the peach by one gene that causes the fuzz, and not a cross between a peach and a plum as some believe.”  Dolan says there is some evidence the peach is actually a cross between a nectarine and an almond.  Peaches are characterized as either “freestone” or “clingstone,” referring to how easily the fruit separates from the stone. Cooks favor freestone because the flesh is soft and separates easily from the pit. There are over 200 varieties of peaches and 175 varieties of nectarines sold commercially in the United States.  White peaches, also called Summerwhites, have a light pink or white interior. Many consider the white peach to be the sweetest, juiciest, most delicate fruit you’ll ever taste. A popular current variety, the ”doughnut” peach is a hybrid that comes from a white, sweet peach.  

In summer, driving through Georgia, you know you’re in Peach country without reading the signs because of the peachy perfume in the air. There’s a certain satisfaction to selecting peaches from your own trees. Chef Scott Peacock had that pleasure when he served two Georgia governors (Zell Miller and Joe Frank Harris) as executive chef. “There were yellow, white, freestone and clingstone peach trees at the governor’s mansion. They were so many that the trees bent under the weight of the peaches, “ he recalls. Now, as executive chef of Watershed restaurant in Decatur, (a suburb of Atlanta) and co-author of The Gift of Southern Cooking: Recipes and Revelations from Two Great American Cooks with southern cooking legend, Edna Lewis, he buys his peaches from small organic farmers or from the Georgia State Farmers’ Market in Atlanta. “There’s nothing better than biting into a peach and letting the juice dribble down your chin, but I do love peach ice cream or cobbler with nutmeg sauce, “ he says. Chef Peacock served peach fried pies (turnovers stuffed with pureed stewed dry peaches; deep fried and showered with granulated sugar) at a City Meals on Wheels event in New York City. “This southern specialty shows up at church bake sales, covered dish suppers and picnics throughout the south, “he remarks.

Although Georgia is the “peach state”, California is the largest producer of peaches and nectarines. Most are grown in the San Joaquin Valley, just south of Fresno. In fact, California produces over 60 percent of all the peaches. South Carolina is a distant second in peach production growing 15% of the U.S. crop, while Georgia comes in third; supplying 13% of all U.S. peaches.

”I love the way the sweet musky earthiness of peaches and apricots marry with wine and savory foods, “says Dan Lewis, the chef at Ironstone Vineyards located in the Central Valley in the Sierra Foothills. Peaches are aromatic and buttery textured, and a perfect complement to crisp and tangy salad greens. Their presence, both cooked and uncooked, in a salad Chef Lewis prepares, adds an interesting textural note.  He poaches peeled peaches in simple syrup made with Chardonnay, sugar and vanilla beans. The peaches are pureed and combined with shallots, vinegar, and vegetable oil to make vinaigrette; the vinaigrette is then poured over a salad of fresh peaches, red onion and butter lettuce.  “I grew up in California, and fruit trees were in everyone’s backyard. If your own backyard didn’t have a certain variety of peach you wanted, you swiped one from your neighbors. My grandfather’s orchard in the Russian River valley had 6 varieties of peaches, plums and nectarines. “You can darn near grow anything here because of our long growing season. Before prohibition there were more wineries here than anywhere else.” Chef Lewis buys heirloom peaches from artisan peach grower, Goldbud Farms in Placerville. “You can smell them a mile away,” he says.  He agrees that taking a bite of a perfectly ripe sweet peach; warm from the sun with the juice running off your chin is a sensual experience. “It doesn’t get any better than that,” he says. “Peaches are my favorite fruit, and adapt beautifully in a peach and lavender scented soup featured in my forthcoming Ironstone Vineyard cookbook.”

“New Jersey white peaches are the best tasting peaches on the planet, “ says Craig Shelton, chef/proprietor of The Ryland Inn in Whitehouse, New Jersey. Although not as big a producer of peaches as other states, New Jersey has a long history of peach production dating back to the early 1600’s and peach production in many grower families is a tradition. Chef Shelton buys his peaches from Mellick’s farm, a few miles away in Tewksbury. “There are traditional recipes like peach melba, but aromatic and buttery textured peaches make a perfect complement to crisp and tangy salad greens, “ he says. Peaches have an affinity with a range of spices and herbs and Chef Shelton exhibits this in a langoustine salad with salsify, green almonds, and kumquats flavored with caraway seed, bay leaf, thyme, and peach pectin. “Peach pectin is made by poaching peaches in a sealed plastic bag in water at 140 degrees for 3 to 4 hours; or until the peaches become jelly-like,“ he explains. He got the idea for this salad from the flavors he tasted in a Condrieu wine from the northern Rhone valley (made from viognier grapes). “The wine is so evocative of peach blossoms, acacia, and tropical fruits, like oranges and kumquats, I was inspired to apply that yin/yang combination to a salad,” he says. To further enhance the aroma of the salad, he sprays it with rose water as it leaves the kitchen. It is served, of course, with Condrieu, from Andre Perret.      

In the Sierra Nevada foothills of northwest California, the summer days are hot, but nights are cool and breezy. Fruits mature slowly here, developing rich, full, finely balanced flavors that are missing from crops rushed to ripeness in hotter regions. The region’s “mountain grown” peaches and plums are highly prized by fruit lovers. Chef Annie Roberts, co-author of Annie and Magrit, Recipes and Stories from the Robert Mondavi Kitchen, and daughter of Magrit Biever Mondavi, treasures the Santa Rosa plums from this region.  She turns them into a plum galette laced with slivered almonds. “I prefer the Santa Rosa plum because it is firm and holds its shape in cooking and the pit comes out easily. Moscato d’oro wine is the perfect enhancement for the plum pastry. I grew up with fruit desserts in the European tradition. The best thing about them is that you don’t feel full after,” she remarks. Centuries ago people started describing anything highly desirable as “plum” because the fruit itself tasted so wonderful. And just one bite of a juicy, ripe plum will convince you they were on the right track. The California Department of Food and Agriculture reports that more than 210,000 tons of plums were grown in the United States last year—most of them in California. Second only to peaches in stone fruit production, plums are grown on five continents. Plums come in a stunning array of shapes, colors, sizes and intensity of sweetness. They can be divided into two categories:  Japanese and European. Japanese plums, which really originated in China, but were brought to the United States from Japan in the 1800’s, better known as Italian, President, and Empress, are the sweetest and smallest variety. The classic Japanese-style plum is the Santa Rosa, a deep red, round fruit with rosy-amber flesh that was developed by the brilliant horticulturist Luther Burbank.  European plums, which are often referred to as prune plums tend to be smaller in size than Japanese plums and have higher sugar content. There are more than 200 varieties. California dominates U.S. production.  One hybrid worth noting is the Pluot, which is mostly plum with some apricot thrown in for sweetness and texture.

One of the most popular uses for plums is with duck, perfect for Pacific Rim and fusion cuisines. The edge of tartness of a good plum plays off nicely against the richness and fat of duck.

Fragrant, sweet, handsome, apricots are native to China (the earliest references go back to 2205 BC). It spread from there to western Asia, where the Greeks knew it as early as 287 B.C. As its Latin name, prunus armenicaa, suggests, the fruit was probably introduced into the region of the Mediterranean by way of Armenia. Apricots are still widely grown in the Middle East. Not since the apricot left the Garden of Eden (scholars suggest the apricot, not the apple, was the forbidden fruit) has it reached the perfection attained in California. The Spanish brought the apricot to the New World and planted them in the mission gardens of California. The first major North American apricot crop was produced south of San Francisco in 1792. However, the Blenheim apricot, which was until recently the most widely planted here, came from England. California produces 98 percent of the apricot crop in the United States. Most apricots are canned because they are extremely fragile. As a result, only 23 percent of domestic apricots are sold fresh; approximately 55 percent are sold in cans; dried and frozen apricots account for the balance. Chef Kimball Jones, restaurant executive chef at Wente Vineyards, and co-author, with Carolyn Wente, of Sharing the Vineyard Table and The Casual Vineyard Table, doesn’t care about the variety of

apricot, “just as long as the fruit is ripe and tastes delicious.”  He buys apricots from Frog Hollow Farms, a certified organic grower in Brentwood about ½ hour from the winery.  He takes advantage of the apricot’s versatility in a flatbread baked with farmers’ cheese and apricots. Chef Jones tops the hot bread with proscuitto and arugula. The whole thing is drizzled with lemon vinaigrette. “The salt in the proscuitto and the acid in the vinaigrette balances the sweetness in the apricots,” he explains. He loves to accompany it with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, or even an off dry Riesling. “I like a wine—whether it’s red or white-- that’s fairly fresh without a lot of oak so it won’t overpower fruit dishes.” 

HOW TO PICK THE PERFECT STONE FRUIT:

The time is ripe to learn how to choose the season’s fresh stone fruits, so here’s a guide:

Peaches, Plums, Apricots:

If it’s green, don’t buy it.

If it doesn’t smell like the fruit itself, don’t buy it.

To test for ripeness for most fruits, press fruit gently with your finger—it should yield slightly. Avoid fruit with breaks in skin; immature fruit (comparatively hard); and overripe fruit (very soft, leaking juice). Once picked, stone fruits don’t grow sweeter, but they will soften to juicy perfection at home. Simply place the fruit inside a paper bag (not plastic), close the top loosely, and keep at room temperature until the fruits are slightly soft at the stem and tips, about 3 to 4 days; check progress daily. To hasten ripening even more, enclose a banana with the fruit. Ripe fruits can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days, but it is best to eat it before it has been refrigerated. 

To freeze-preserve stone fruits, halve or quarter them; (cherries may be frozen whole) spread on a cookie sheet and freeze until firm. Then place in covered freezer containers or plastic bags and return to freezer.

To prevent browning on the cut surface of fruit, dip slices in a mixture of 1 cup water and I tablespoon lemon juice.

Peaches: Don’t be fooled by a peach with a lot of red color. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ripe, it just may mean it’s a variety with a lot of red color. Look at the fruit’s background color. It should be creamy yellow with no green. Peach skin (though warm and fuzzy) presents a nuisance when cooking. Peeling a peach is like peeling a tomato: Boil water, Dip peaches in the boiling water, one at a time, for about 16-20 seconds and then remove with a slotted spoon. Immediately dunk the peach into a bowl of cold water. The skin will slip off.

Cherries: Look for very dark color in sweet cherries; types range from deep burgundy to black. Choose the darkest of the type at hand. Surface should be bright, glossy and plump; stems should be fresh-looking and supple. Sour cherries will be a bit softer that sweet ones. Avoid cherries that are small, soft or sticky, and always store cherries in the refrigerator—no ripening is needed. The surest way to check the flavor of a cherry, as with any fruit, is of course to taste it. I’ve found that a cherry is easy to snitch when the retailer isn’t looking. Cherries deteriorate rather quickly. Do not rinse until just prior to serving. To store cherries, place them in an open plastic bag, preferably atop a paper towel to absorb moisture and refrigerate for no more than three days. Although you can remove the pit with a paring knife, it’s easiest with a cherry pitter that can be found in kitchenware shops.

Just a Bowl of Cherries:

Sometimes the most interesting uses of wine with fruit don’t even require cooking:  Champagne works its simple magic with stone fruits--pour a spoonful of Champagne into fruit soup; allow a bit of champagne to cascade over a dish of sorbet; drizzle honey on fresh peaches—and add a splash of champagne. The essence of summer itself is fresh fruit pureed and only slightly sweetened for a startling simple sorbet. These cream-free summer ices wash the palate. Set the sorbet between entrée and a well-chosen plate of cheese for a refreshing intermission. At the end of a meal, sorbet rounds out the menu with the vivid edge of a cold soup. The sweet, honeyed flavors and floral notes of Moscato-based wines make them superb accompaniments to desserts. But increasingly they are being used as flavoring in fruit desserts. Just pour a splash of Moscato right into a bowl of ripe fruit or poach a ripe peach in Moscato before bathing it in a cloud of zabaglione. The fruit flavored poaching liquid can be cooled and frozen for poaching another batch of fruit later, or boiled down to make a ready sauce for a quick dessert. Poached in red wine, peaches, plums, apricots and many other fruits pick up color and retain their freshness thanks to wine’s natural acidity. Grilling or roasting peaches, apricots, or nectarines caramelizes the fruit, adding a deep sweetness.

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