Bridgeport café takes advantage of peach season
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Peaches are in abundance this time of year. At Nana, a Bridgeport cafe, peaches are used in everything from breakfast to dinner.
There are several ingredients that pair extremely well with peaches: cream, of course. Pork, definitely, and even whiskey. Each of these combos is explored and expanded at a well-known cafe on south halsted, where they do as much as they can within each season.
Peaches have always made themselves welcome at the breakfast table, and it's no different at Nana, a Bridgeport cafe emphasizing as much local and organic as possible. Their take on "peaches and cream" is simply hot cakes, dusted with powdered sugar and then shmeared with a thick, homemade peach jam, before getting a final drizzle of Greek yogurt.
But the kitchen also loves to pickle their peaches. They begin by dropping a few into boiling water; this loosens the skins and after less than a minute, they're removed to an ice bath, then stripped of their fuzzy skin.
"The juiciness, they retain the flavor. You don't lose the flavor if you acidulate them, and you pickle them or something like that. You still get that peach flavor from them," said Nana's chef, Jeremy Kiens.
Once peeled, they can also be pickled. Tossed into a pickle brine of vinegar and sugar with a suspended bag of clove, cinnamon and lemon thyme, among others, they're kept in that brine for quite a while. When an order comes in, say, for a breaded and fried pork cutlet, they can instantly become sweet-tart garnishes, over a makeshift salad with pickled red onions.
"The acidity balances out with the richness of the cutlet itself. There's also a peach whiskey jam on there as well so it gives it a little more of a spunk to it and zip to it, cause there's a little bit of chilies in there," he said.
And that jam does double duty in a peach whiskey sour, shaken with a peach elixir, fresh lemon juice and a few tablespoons of jam, then strained over ice. It's not just the kitchen, but also the bar that loves to play with peaches this time of year.
"They're around, definitely. I want to use what's in season," said Kiens.
Nana
3267 S. Halsted St.
(312) 929-2486
