Summer is fleeting and peaches are ripe for the picking and eating. Out of hand, over the sink with sweet juices running down my chin and arm, sliced and steeped in a quenching peachy lemonade, or pureed and churned into cold ice cream. These are a few of the ways I’ve been indulging in the peaches I purchase at the farmer’s market from Woolf Farms. Last Sunday I was lucky to wrestle politely grab the last order of rosy Red Havens. Sweet, but not cloying with a welcome acid balance – perfect for roasting as to coax out the stone fruit’s natural sugars.

This may now be my favorite peach dessert. Ginger and peaches have a natural affinity for each other, and what doesn’t taste better with butter? A bit of salt elevates and intensifies the peach flavor, dark speckles of vanilla seeds add a deeper layer of nuance. I love basil with peaches, and the licorice-spiciness of this just-picked, tender leafed variety from Birdsong Farm holds its own beautifully with the zingy bathing of ginger. A cooling, creamy counterpoint is welcome, and I like mine in the form of a tangy cultured creme fraiche or Greek yogurt. A bit of texture and crunch comes from crushed amaretti cookies – almond being another magnetic attraction for peaches. No amaretti? Sliced or chopped toasted almonds are a superb option.

One single spoonful of this balance of flavors, temperatures and textures is guaranteed to send your mouth into a warming tizzy of late summer harvest madness, and compelling enough to ensure that the bowl will be licked clean. Mine was. Both of them.

Hot Buttered Ginger Peaches

Serves 4-6
Ingredients:

4 smallish firm-ripe, freestone peaches, pitted and cut into quarters

1/4  cup Ginger Syrup (see recipe below)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Good pinch of salt

1/2 moist vanilla bean, seeds scraped

Creme fraiche or Greek yogurt  - enough for dolloping

Fresh basil leaves

Crushed amaretti cookies or toasted almonds

Preheat the oven to 400. In an 8″ skillet, stovetop, heat the ginger syrup, butter, salt and vanilla seeds over a low flame, just until the butter is melted and all is swirled together. Arrange the peach quarters, one cut side down, on top of the syrup mixture.

Roast the peaches, center rack for twenty minutes. You can now opt to flip the peaches onto their opposite cut sides (which I do since I like to fiddle), or just baste and continue to roast another ten minutes. The peach skin should be a bit shriveled and the peaches softened, but not to a mushy texture. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for ten minutes before serving.

Spoon the warm peaches with puddles of pan juices into serving bowls. Top with dollops of yogurt, creme fraiche or sour creme. Add a few small leaves of torn fresh basil to each portion as well as a scattering of the crushed amaretti.

Ginger Syrup

This will make more than what you will need for the roasted peaches, which is wonderful. This syrup has become one of my kitchen staples. Think ginger lemonade, Moscow mules, as a glaze for pork or duck…

To juice the ginger, I take a quantity of fresh, unpeeled ginger, scrub it well in cold water, and trim free of any dried gnarly ends. Cut the ginger into chunks and press through a juicer.

The syrup ratio is one part ginger juice to two parts cane sugar. For the sake of a recipe:

1 cup fresh ginger juice

2 cups cane sugar

Combine in a jar and shake until the sugar is dissolved.

I’ve had several people ask if there is way to make ginger syrup in the absence of a juicer – yes. I’m providing the link to another recipe, one which has you simmer sliced ginger with sugar and water for a while, then straining out the ginger pieces. I’m sure the syrup is wonderful, albeit a bit tempered in taste from the fresh hot assertiveness of fresh ginger juice in the first recipe. Either way, the peaches in the buttery ginger syrup will taste amazing.