Yes, two great tastes that go great together!

We caught an episode of Iron Chef (Japan) the other night. The theme ingredient was peaches, and the challenger made a Peaches and Beef Cheek stew. (There have been two peach batters, this was the Sakai vs Watanabe one.)

Now, those of you that know Rachel well, know she does not mix her fruit and meat. This is too bad, because, I like the contrast of the two.

To my surprise, she was actually interested in to Peach Beef stew dish. Needless to say, I jumped on the opprotunity! Watanabe had made his stew in a pressure cooker, mostly for time reasons I’m guessing. That said, I was going to follow what he’d done as closely as I could. Aside from the use of the pressure cooker, he used the following ingredients (that they named at least):

  1. Several insanely expense peaches (like $10 per) [I used 4 ‘regular’ peaches from the nearby Meijer.
  2. A big chunk of beef cheek [I bought a regular beef roast]
  3. Some kind of stock [I used beef stock, but I think I’ll use vegetable next time]

Not much to go on. On top of what I knew it needed I added some rum, red wine, ginger, a small amount of garlic and some fresh ground black pepper. I sealed the pressure cooker and cooked it for about 40 minutes at an unknown pressure (forgot to check, sorry).

The result was quite tasty, but not very peachy. I attribute this to using a too strong beef stock – though it’s certainly possible that Watanabe’s $10 per peaches were stronger than the random peaches from somewhere in the southern hemisphere that I got at Meijer. Next time a I’ll use lighter vegetable stock and maybe an extra peach or two.

The peaches themselves were tangy (maybe they absorbed most of the wine?) and very soft after being pressure cooked. They had obviously absorbed a great deal of beef flavor, but were still very distinct tasting from the beef (as well as obviously having a much different texture).

I’d also like to try this dish with mangos, either by themselves or in combination with the peaches. Another variation would be to try some sort of game meat, like boar or elk, which would probably require more fruit to be well balanced.

Anyhow, served with some white rice on the side this made a nice dinner as well as a couple lunches.