I don’t know about you, but this time of year turns me into a complete glutton for fruit. Between the CSA box bringing blueberries and peaches, cherries and nectarines on sale at the grocery stores, to say nothing of what delights wait at the farmer’s market (the other week I found elderberries!), it seems like nearly all I eat these days is fruit. Not that I’m complaining. But such hoarding does come with a price, when you realize you’ve been buying more than you can eat. So despite the temperature in my kitchen at times reaching a robust ninety, I couldn’t help but be tempted by the thought of roasted apricots and peaches touched with a little honey and a few sprigs of rosemary.

As much as I love the flavor of apricots, I don’t think I’ve ever had one that was delicious enough to eat out of hand. It’s the tartness that gets me. But roasted, dried, made into jam, or baked into cake…now you’re talking. And it sure doesn’t get much simpler than roasting. The way I made these hardly needs a recipe — just pit the little fellas, line them up in a cast iron pan or glass baking dish, drizzle with honey, and roast for about twenty minutes or so at 400ºF until they become soft and juicy. The honey I used was some fancy stuff I found at Dean and Deluca, but use whatever you like best. I think herbal flavors go so well with stone fruit, so a little rosemary in the pan added a delicious fragrance, and also enhanced the unusual herbal flavor of the honey.

After the fruit was roasted, I added a few tart blackberries to seal the deal. Warm or cold, eaten alone or swirled with some thick yogurt…I’m easy to please these days. Try it with whatever summer stone fruit you have on hand. And if you have a nice little convection or toaster oven to keep your heat (and sanity) contained, all the better!

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Today is the last day of Summer. I suppose this warrants my recent panic to buy up as much fresh produce as possible. It happens every year - suddenly it seems as though I didn’t honor the season quite enough, that there really could have been a few more picnics or pints of blueberries or glasses of ginger-laced lemonade gulped down on hazy nights . This year was better than most, though. The amount of peaches we received in our boxes from Penn’s Corner was extraordinary, and I might almost be satisfied enough to last until next year.

I decided to roast the most recent (and final) batch of white peaches, a very good treatment for those that may be a bit too mushy to eat out of hand. Just like with the tomatoes, roasting does a lovely job on peaches, concentrating their flavor and transforming them into elegant comfort food. Peaches in red wine is a classic combination, so I took the opportunity to try out David Lebovitz’s Red Wine Syrup. I’m here to say that this may be an even better use of leftover wine than the old ice-cube-tray trick - the flavor is intense and sweet, but not boozy, and you can add all sorts of spices or fruit peel to liven it up. I couldn’t resist trying it out on ricotta, which became nothing short of luxurious after happily soaking up the syrup.

So if you happen to find yourself with a few errant peaches, plums, nectarines, or, gosh, I bet fresh figs would be outrageous with the syrup, let them take leave of summer in style. A quick kiss of heat with ruby trimming seems a fitting prelude to the equinox, don’t you think?

Roasted Peaches with Ricotta and Red Wine Syrup
Serves 3-4

4 small peaches
1/4 cup mild honey
about 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup ricotta, room temperature

Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Pit peaches and place them cut side up in a shallow baking dish. Dot the inside of each peach half with a small (half-teaspoon size) nugget of butter. Drizzle with honey. Bake for 25 minutes or until tender and fragrant.

Red Wine Syrup
Adapted from David Lebovitz

1 cup red wine
6 tablespoons sugar
4-5 whole cloves

In a small, non-reactive skillet, cook the red wine and sugar until bubbles thicken and the syrup is reduced by half. Remove from heat and strain into a bowl.

To Serve
Spoon about 1/4 cup ricotta on a small plate for each person. Top with 2-3 peach halves and drizzle with red wine syrup. Serve warm.

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They’re neither Irish, nor alcoholic, but hey, they’re green!

My St. Paddy’s Day this year was taken up by the Fair Folk assuming possession of my wireless router, hence the delay of this post. I also wasn’t feeling much for proper Irish fare this weekend, as I think my limit of wintry stews has been fully exploited, and the thought of eating any more potatoes before next Fall sends shivers down my spine. Yes, a shameful Irish-ish lass I am who shuns the humble potato.

I have, however, been wanting to try cooking with matcha (green tea powder) for ages. This weekend seemed as good a time as any to go for the green stuff. I decided on a simple coconut pudding to which was added a few teaspoons of matcha powder. This gave the pudding a lovely pale green hue and an intriguing, slightly grassy flavor from the matcha. At first it was a tiny bit odd, but pretty quickly became hard to stop eating it! I’ve seen other recipes that result in striking deep-green colored cakes or puddings, but for me I can’t imagine using the quantity of powder required to make them so dark, since it took only a modest amount here for the flavor to be nicely present but not overpowering.

This pudding is somewhat lighter in fat and calories than a typical coconut pudding that uses coconut milk or coconut cream, but the taste is hardly compromised. I love the slightly chewy bits of coconut, and couldn’t help but top the wee servings with a bit of diced mango, which added some contrasting color and tartness. Actually, I would put them in larger containers next time; the shot glasses made a charming presentation, but we ended up needing at least 2 per person. At any rate, these coconutty puddings were certainly as addictive as any rainbow-chasing…I think even Paddy would approve!

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