Summer BC Fruit Recipes
What to do with all that ripe BC Fruit from the Okanagan? I just bought $100 worth of peaches, cherries and sweet apricots after visiting my grandparents last week near Kelowna. They all looked so perfect that I went a bit overboard… it was a LOT of fruit. So, I went to battle! Here are my 3 favourite BC fruit recipes:
Those little cherries didn’t know what hit them!
Apricot Ginger Sorbet – I’ve been using my vitamix (read: AWESOME blender) to puree these into sorbet.
Recipe: Pit and quarter apricots, then toss in ginger and a bit of sugar. Freeze. Put in blender and puree to a smooth perfect sorbet. Note: You have to blend these ‘to order’ you can’t refreeze the sorbet after you’ve made it necessarily. You could try this in a regular blender but I’d chop the apricots up to smaller pieces before freezing.
Cherry Juniper Reduction– My favourite use of this sauce is over duck. You can freeze and make this one into sorbet too or top a chocolate cake with it!
Recipe: Pit the cherries and half. Toss them in sugar, add ground juniper and perhaps a little ground cloves, then, put them into a sauce pan and heat to a boil. Then simmer for 15 min.
Sweet Peaches w/ goat cheese + elderflower reduction – This one a super easy dessert. I like to eat my peaches fresh when I can, nothing is better than an Okanagan peach.
Recipe: Half and pit peaches, peel skin off (ripe peaches only). Toss in a dash of lemon and sugar to keep them from browning. Either make your own elderflower syrup in the spring or buy some at ikea or whole foods:) Mix 1 tbs of the syrup in with about 1/2 cup of the goat cheese (or to taste depending on how sweet you want it). Make golf ball sized rounds with a soft goat cheese and place in the center of each peach. Drizzle with more elderflower syrup. Top with rose petals from your garden if you’ve got em.
Note: most of these recipes are very loose as far as ingredient measurements. I usually just add sugar to taste depending on how much fruit I have. Remember you can always sweeten, so use less sugar to start if you are feeling unsure. Also feel free to reply to this post with any other questions.
Have fun!
Chef Robin