It’s nearly the end of another excellent South African stone fruit season, and what a privilege it is to live in a country where our farmers grow the most delicious, export quality summer fruit.
Let summer linger in your kitchen, one slice, spoonful, or stewed plum at a time. The season may be winding down, but there’s still time to capture summer’s sweetness – ripe, honeyed peaches, tart plums, and fragrant nectarines – ready to be stewed, pulped or frozen for upcoming winter delights.
Stone fruit have such a long season in South Africa that we can easily get into a happy everyday habit of blending juicy peaches and nectarines into our smoothies or adding tart and sassy plum slices or pulp to our morning oats. But we don’t have to dread the end of season. Luckily, according to Juicy Delicious, stone fruit can be processed at home very easily, making it easy for us to effectively extend nature’s seasonal boundaries.
If making jams and fruit preserves is not your thing, remember that you can simply blend fresh peaches, nectarines and plums into pulps and freeze immediately. This means you can still be enjoying your favourite cling peach and almond smoothie in the middle of June. And it doesn’t really take much more work to cut and freeze peach, nectarine and plum slices which can brighten up winter days with stone fruit tarts, cobblers and pies.
Juicy Delicious and celebrity chef, Jenny Morris have collaborated to curate a unique stone fruit recipe catalogue with the aim of empowering you to keep summer going with easy access to fresh stone fruit flavours, no matter the season.
For the basics, Jenny suggests two stewed stone fruit recipes that are ideal for freezing in freezer-safe containers or freezer bags. The fruit of these recipes will retain their goodness in your home freezer for six months, so you won’t find yourself waiting all winter to enjoy the flavour of a peach or plum again.
1. Jenny Morris’s stewed plums for freezing – cinnamon and cloves, and even port, if you like, elevate the luscious, full flavour of South African plums.
2. Jenny Morris’s stewed peaches for freezing – the simplicity of this recipe is important. Here, Jenny adds just a hint of cinnamon and bright lemon juice so that she retains the fresh, honeyed uniqueness of the natural peach flavour.
Let’s face it, having peaches and plums in your freezer through winter can make you feel like you have a treasure stash. You can simply defrost a portion to add to your smoothies or oats, make a surprise homemade ice cream for a dinner party, or serve up a fresh, fruity winter baked dessert on a special family night.
If you would like more inspiration, Jenny has added these special stone fruit recipes to the Juicy Delicious end of season catalogue:·
More inspiration for your stone fruit freezer essentials
We are so quick to bite into a fresh juicy peach – irresistible. However, we should take a moment to think about how peaches, nectarines and plums can elevate our home-cooking all-year round. What versatile fruits! As the end of season approaches, you might try your hand at a nectarine jam, a plum sauce or a peach chutney. If you don’t, you will raise the bar of your home-cooking anyway if you just pulp and freeze the last of the season’s peaches, nectarines and plums.
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