Garden State's juicy crop is ripe for the picking

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

By BILL PITCHER, STAFF WRITER

Chilled lobster with vanilla-peach vinaigrette; goat cheese with peach compote; shrimp and pork belly with a peach-chipotle glaze ... yes, Bruce Lefebvre is trying to paint the town peach.
 
He’s the executive chef at The Frog and the Peach restaurant in New Brunswick, and Friday he’s also the guest chef at the James Beard House in New York, where he’ll showcase the sweet and savory diversity of one of New Jersey’s most celebrated home-grown crops.
 
But his ideal peach application isn’t in the peach clafoutis he’ll serve to chefs, critics and other food experts on Friday, and it’s not in the peach honey over sheep’s cheese or the shrimp with a ginger-peach glaze he serves to customers who request his summer peach menu. It’s found beneath a salad of arugula, duck confit, spiced almonds and prosecco wine vinaigrette: five thin rounds sliced from a raw, unseasoned, unmolested New Jersey peach.
 
“I just like them raw,” he said.
 
It’s prime time for peaches, as South Jersey farms rush their crop to supermarkets in “Jersey Fresh” boxes and North Jersey orchards start supplying farmers’ markets. But for real “Jersey Fresh,” and the purest taste of summer, skip the supermarket, bypass the farm stand and head straight to the source.
 
Standing alongside row after row of peach trees at his hillside farm in Harding, which faces the Watchung Mountains, Ken Wightman said that there’s no comparing peaches pulled straight from the tree with the peaches you bag in the grocery store.
 
“Most of what you buy in supermarkets is not as good as a peach that’s taken from here and eaten,” he said. “You can’t beat that flavor anywhere else.”

It’s not just the flavor. It’s the juice, too.

“Get them from the tree and they’re going to have more juice because they’re riper and they’re going to have more sweetness,” said Peter Demarest, owner of Demarest Farms, who has about 12 acres of more than 20 types of peach trees in Hillsdale and Saddle River.

“When you bite into that peach, juice should be running down your chin,” he added.
Finding ripe peaches on trees is easier than finding ripe ones in a supermarket, Demarest said. That’s because peaches picked for market are mature — not fully ripened — so they won’t bruise during packing, shipping and stocking.
 
Look for a peach with reddish cheeks and a bright yellow background, he said. A reddish background means the peach isn’t quite ripe. “And feel it,” he added. “It has to be relatively firm so it doesn’t bruise when you put it in the bag.”

And, says Wightman, when you find a ripe peach, your nose knows. Give it a sniff at the stem. The aroma may be overwhelming.
 
“There is nothing like that smell,” he said.
 
Wightman and Demarest grow more than 20 varieties of peaches and their offspring, nectarines, from familiar yellow to spicy, doughnut-shaped white peaches, largely because each variety ripens at different times. They began picking peaches around the Fourth of July, and they’ll be going through Labor Day. This week alone, Demarest expects to pick 25,000 pounds, all destined for his market and others in North Jersey.