The Peach Lady is Back…

Every Monday, “Mme Allô-Allô,” who makes all of the village announcements over the loudspeaker announces that the marchande de pêches is back. Just like last year, the peach lady pulls up to the square in her white van, chock full of delicious peaches to sell to the village, and just like last year, I always look forward to paying her a visit.

Naturally, we take advantage of both the quality and the prices, and our sporadic one or two kilo order from last year has jumped up to several flats each and every Monday. Some peaches are eaten out of hand as snacks, but many make their way into jam: after the apricot season ended, the little yellow fruits were quickly replaced by this pink and orange cousin.

The recipe for peach jam changed from that for apricot for two reasons. One is the fact that with the younger kids, there was a need for a lot more hands-on time away from the stove. The new recipe allows for almost all of the work to be done away from the stove top, with just the last five minutes actually being over the flame. The new recipe completely dissolves all of the sugar before the jam even hits the stove, which allows for a lot of fun with wooden spoons, and a lot less worrying about whether boiling jam is going to burn someone’s little hand.

The second reason was the discovery of Confisuc, a special sugar made for making jam, which required most of the work to be done away from the stove. Confisuc is used in equal quantity (by weight) to fruit. One bag of Confisuc is one kilo, and four of the marchande de pêche‘s large July peaches is exactly enough for four sous-chefs to wash, dénoyauter and slice his or her own peach and bring home a nicely sized jar of delicious jam.

We still have jars upon jars of apricot jam. I think I’ll be eating it for breakfast every day to the end of the summer. But the peach jam is just as delicious and turns a lovely shade of pink when fully cooked: we joke to the girls that it’s a girly jam, but we all know better… no one can resist this summer peach jam.

Peach Jam

1 kilo peaches
1 kilo Confisuc

Wash the peaches. Remove the pits and cut into eight equal parts. Add the peaches to a large mixing bowl and combine with all of the sugar using a wooden spoon. The sugar should be completely dissolved in the juice of the peaches, and there should be several chunks of fruit remaining.

Transfer mixture to a saucepan, and heat over medium-high heat, stirring all the while, until boiling. Boil for five minutes, continuing to stir.

Remove saucepan from heat and skim the foam from the top of the jam. Ladle into clean jars and seal.