Peach-O-Rama!

August is peach season in the Pacific Northwest, so what better way to enjoy the season than to indulge in a peach pie? However, as this pie will be created for a themed potluck dinner with friends - the theme being "Endangered Species" - I am going to try some substitutions. Bear with me, as I am wont to be "punny"...

Many peach pie recipes call for a bit of lemon juice. I plan to substitute tamarind paste, which is tart and citrusy like a lemon but also has a little bit of smoke and flowers in the palate, too. While tamarind is not endangered, the Golden Lion Tamarin monkey is very much so. So I suppose you could say I was monkeying with my peach pie by adding tamarin'd.

Another recent re-discovery of mine was the deliciousness of the Okinawan sweet potato. Firt, it is purple, which is awesome. Second, it is delicious, which is awesome - rather a cross of honey, oats, and hay, with a depth and softness to the flavour that is usually lacking in regular sweet potatoes or yams unless you slow-cook them with butter. Now, the Okinawan sweet potato is [thankfully] not endangered but a certain obscure Western Madagascar Yam is so. And I will take linguistic, biological, and culinary license by equating two roots which are even different colours and live on opposite sides of the world and include them in my now-orange-and-purple pie!

Or at least I will do so this evening. Pictures to come.