Gingered Peaches and Ice Cream
Gingered Peaches and Ice Cream
It’s funny. I trained as a pastry chef in France, and while I do love something sweet at the end of the meal, even at my restaurant we only have one dessert on the menu, our warm skillet chocolate chip cookie. Don’t get me wrong, when that passes by in the restaurant, it catches everyone’s attention and IT IS GOOD! But, now and then, on a hot summer evening, I there’s something so good about using fresh produce, sautéing it get some of the delicious juices out and serving it over some excellent vanilla ice cream (also what we use on the chocolate chip cookie).
This week, I have Gingered Peaches and Ice Cream for you. I picked up some ripe peaches from my local farmers market and they were too perfect not to use for this purpose. I’m a big proponent of using good quality ice cream though. I belong to the camp of the full fat, really good stuff. I think it should be the coat your mouth it’s so creamy stuff. There’s just something so different about it and I think it makes a huge difference taste wise. I also think you end up eating less of it and it is significantly more satisfying (though Becca my registered dietitian can speak more to this below).
I digress, back to the peaches because they are truly the star. We are in prime peach season right now so they should be perfectly ripe. If you ate one on its own, the juice would drip down your hand it’s so juicy. I chose to flambé the peaches with a touch of rum and sweet basil because well why not? If you are serving this to a crown with kids, you can skip this step or make two batches and add a touch of brown sugar to help form more of sauce. The other substitution I would make or offer is if you are vegan or dairy free, you can always use coconut butter instead of regular butter and substitute the ice cream with your favorite sorbet or non-dairy vanilla ice cream. Otherwise, enjoy! And with that, here’s Becca for some nutrition facts.
Notes from Becca:
Thanks Chef! I agree, the good quality ice cream, i.e. the full fat stuff, definitely has a certain mouth feel, a quality that coats your tongue, and often leads to satisfaction of the craving sooner. It’s interesting to watch food and nutrition trends and research intersect. During the 90’s the research recommended decreasing fat intake. However, this led to increased sugar additions to processed foods and therefore increased sugar intake. The initial research was actually based off inaccurate information, but I won’t get started on this as it’s an entirely different argument about media misrepresentation of nutrition research. I will say that as a dietitian, most of us continue to recommend full fat unless someone is watching their calorie intake. If we are speaking about full fat dairy in particular, often you consume much less of the full fat food because you end up more satisfied. In the end, that’s what we want, everyone to be more satisfied with dish/food item we actually wanted to eat in the first place than the low fat substitute right?
Eat Well With Ming: Did you know peaches are a good source of vitamin c, important for both collagen formation for your skin and antioxidant properties?
Allergy Free Note:shellfish free, fish free, peanut free, tree nut free, gluten free, soy free, egg free
Gingered Peaches and Ice Cream
Serves 2
½ tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
2 ripe peaches, skin on, halved, pitted and sliced thinly
1 tablespoon rum
2 scoops of your favorite good quality vanilla ice cream
Fresh sweet basil, chiffonade
*Note, if making for children, add 1 tablespoon brown sugar instead of the rum
1. Add butter to a sauté pan and bring to medium heat. Melt butter and add the ginger to soften. Sauté to take the rawness out, about 1-2 minutes.
2. Add the peach slices to the melted butter and sauté. Once they start to soften and are about 50% softened, add the rum. Be careful as the rum might light on fire. It will subside quickly though.
3. Scoop the ice cream into your desired glasses. Quickly add the peaches on top, it will melt the ice cream quickly since they will be warm. Top with basil and get ready to enjoy quickly :)