Spicy Peaches

The first time I was invited to spend Christmas with my husband's family we had a great dinner with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, salad, etc. But when it came to dessert, my mother in law served canned peaches.
I found that rather weird because it didn't really fit with the rest of the festive home cooked meal.
Fortunately my husband never insisted on keeping this tradition when we started to make our own Christmas dinner.
However I recently stumbled over this recipe of spiced peaches, also out of a can, from Nigella Lawson. It immediately reminded me of the first Christmas with my husband's family and I thought that it would be a rather nice addition to our usual  Christmas dinner. Instead of serving the peaches straight out of the can they are spiced and a wonderful smell of ginger, chili and clove went through the kitchen while I was preparing these peaches. I have only tasted a small spoon of the syrup of the dish but that little taste was already very promising....

Spiced peaches

  (From Nigella Lawson)

This is a beautiful condiment to eat with roast ham, hot or cold, and I love it with cheese, too. It makes the kitchen feel like a proper Christmas kitchen - and it's a very easy present to whip up for people too, beautiful in old-fashioned glass jars.

Ingredients

• 2 x 400g/14oz cans peach halves in syrup (not juice)
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
• 2 short sticks cinnamon
• 4cm/1½in piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly into rounds
• ½ tsp dried chilli flakes
• ½ tsp sea salt/kosher salt, or ¼ tsp table salt
• ¼ tsp whole black peppercorns
• 3 cloves

Preparation method

1. Empty the cans of peaches with their syrup into a saucepan.
2. Add the vinegar, cinnamon, sliced ginger, chilli flakes, salt, peppercorns and cloves.
3. Bring to the boil and let it bubble for a minute or so, then turn off the heat and leave in the pan to keep warm.
4. Serve the peaches with a hot ham, letting people take a peach half each and some of the spiced juice. Any leftover spiced peaches can be stored in an airtight jar and eaten cold with cold ham.