Cameron Thompson, the chef at Decatur restaurant Farm Burger, will be demonstrating this sweet and spicy peach salad at Sunday’s Grant Park Peach Jam event.
Farm Burger Peach Salad
4 ea Georgia Peaches (sliced)
2 large mint leaves julienne
3 tbs toasted pecans
1 tbs crumbled feta cheese
2 tbs Ancho chili dressing
Coat peaches in the dressing. Pile peaches in a small bowl. Top peaches with mint, pecans and feta cheese.
Ancho Dressing
1 cup sugar
4 each toasted ancho peppers
1 T Dijon mustard
2 cups rice wine vinegar
2 cups water
2 cups vegetable oil
Place sugar and ancho chilies in a blender and blend until it forms a powder. Add mustard, rice wine vinegar and blend to form a paste. Slowly drizzle oil into mixture then slowly drizzle in water.
Peach salad - makes 4 servings
Per serving: 106 calories (percent of calories from fat, 49), 2 grams protein, 13 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams fiber, 6 grams fat (1 gram saturated), 4 milligrams cholesterol, 28 milligrams sodium.
Ancho Dressing - makes approximately 6-1/2 cups
Per 2-tablespoon serving: 91 calories (percent of calories from fat, 81), trace protein, 4 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram fiber, 8 grams fat (1 gram saturated), no cholesterol, 4 milligrams sodium.
Peach Jam 2013:Wednesday, 5-7 p.m, pig roast and a peach barbecue sauce competitition at the Decatur Farmer's Market, 163 Clairemont Ave, at the corner of Commerce Drive and Church Street; Thursday, 5:30-7 p.m., cocktail competition at East Atlanta Village Farmers Market, 561 Flat Shoals Ave.; Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to noon, Peachapalooza at East Lake Farmer's Mart, cooking competition featuring home cooks and their favorite peach pies, ice cream, chutneys, salsa and other dishes; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., cobbler competition, parade and games at the Grant Park Farmers Market, at the corner of Cherokee Avenue and Milledge Avenue. Events are free but tickets to taste food and drink at each event are available for sale. For information: www.farmatl.org/
Or call Corinne Coe at East Lake Farmers Market: 404-468-3632.
The peach, that aromatic, Georgia-grown, nectar-bomb of goodness, is in season, and all is right with the world.
Like the watermelon, but even more so, the peach is a treat that tells us summer is here, and demands full participation. If it’s a good peach, you need both hands and a bib.
Of those super-juicy peaches, “We call them ‘sink peaches,’” said Frank Funderburk, area peach agent with the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service. “You have to lean over a kitchen sink to eat them.”
All things juicy will be celebrated this week, from Wednesday through Sunday, at the Peach Jam 2013, taking place at four different Community Farmers Markets in Atlanta in events sponsored by Slow Food Atlanta.
Home cooks will whip up their best recipes in a peach cobbler competition, mixologists will go toe-to-toe in a peach cocktail contest, and visitors are promised tastes of such delicacies as peach chutney, pickled peaches, peach barbecue sauce, peach salads and other incarnations of the flame-colored treat.
They’re showing love for a fruit that has somehow slipped from its Georgia pedestal. Georgia’s peach production peaked in the 1940s, when we truly could be called the Peach State. By the 1950s South Carolina surpassed Georgia, and now ships more than double Georgia’s 40,000 yearly tons. In the last 10 years Georgia farmers turned to the blueberry and its supposedly healthful qualities instead. Georgia produced $93 million worth of blueberries in 2011, compared to $31 million in peaches.
Older farmers are dying off and younger farmers are not opting for the peach business, because, says fifth generation peach grower Will Pearson McGehee, it’s just too darn hard.
What makes it such a challenge, says McGehee, is the fact that “every living human, animal, pest and insect wants to eat them.”
McGehee’s great-great-grandfather, Moses Winlock Pearson, began growing peaches in Crawford County in the late 1800s. Today McGehee, 37, and his cousin Lawton Pearson grow 1,600 acres of peaches and 2,800 acres of pecans in the red clay soil near Macon. Pearson Farm will provide the peaches for the Peach Jam activities, picking them a scant 24 hours before they arrive at the tents.
McGehee and Pearson grow about 30 varieties, each of which produces for only about 10 or 12 days. The varieties ripen at different times throughout the 100-day peach season, stretching from May to August. Right now crews are picking the Harvester, an old-school heirloom freestone peach, and the Blaze Prince, a very red freestone that will continue to mature through July 4.
While South Carolina has stepped up its marketing, calling its product “the Sweeter Peach,” Georgia fans aren’t convinced.
“Georgia has the best peaches on planet earth,” said Miles Macquarrie, bartender at Leon’s Full Service, who will be judging Thursday’s cocktail contest this year. “If there’s a Georgia peach around, I’m going to get one of those first,” he added.
Macquarrie has enlarged the repertoire of the peach with a concoction called the Wasp that hearkens back to the Bee’s Knees, a classic gin cocktail from the Prohibition era.
Instead of gin, honey syrup and lemon, Macquarrie uses rye whiskey with Georgia peach honey, lemon juice, salt, pepper and spices. “It’s like drinking whiskey and eating peaches outside while you’re grilling,” he said.
About the taste of peaches, Frank Funderburk is more diplomatic. He judges Georgia and South Carolina fruit to be about even, if they’re picked at the right time.
California, on the other hand, which ships more than Georgia and South Carolina combined, doesn’t win any praise from Funderburk.
“You don’t want to even mention California (peaches),” he said. “They taste like cardboard.”
About the Author
