Philly: Pomegranate and Peach Sangria

I often prided myself on being able to pull whatever I have on hand and making something delicious. In my opinion, the more creative you are, the more fun cooking can be. Still with this talent comes a strangeness: a.k.a. having these ingredients on hand.

For a normal person, if you told them to make Sangria, they would have to immediately go to the store to pick up the various (most likely all) ingredients that this drink requires. No one would have this stuff on hand…right?

Ahhh…that’s where I come along. Yes, as a college undergrad I happen to have on hand the ingredients to make a pretty awesome Sangria on a whim. I hope I haven’t lost you so far.

If you are saying to yourself, “what the heck is Sangria?” It is a Spanish wine punch made with fresh fruit and it is sweet, tangy, and refreshing without being “too sweet.”

The idea to make sangria came from two things I had lying around that I have been meaning to use.

First: Peaches. I greedily bought an entire peck of peaches before we headed back to school. Unfortunately, that was almost four weeks ago, and it has left me to finish off roughly 50+ peaches by myself.

Second: for my birthday my sister gave me a bottle of Pomegranate Wine from a local winery in Bucks County. It was a very cool gift, but it seems to be better as a mixing wine rather than to drink straight. Think Arbor Mist’s sweetness turned up about 12 notches.

So how do you use up two items such as these? By now you should know the answer.

I have never actually made sangria before but I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult. So I pulled out some of the things I had off hand that usually go in the mixture: Sugar, rum, orange juice, apples, lime, lemon-lime soda.

I happened to have exactly one mini-bottle of Bacardi rum that my mother gave me for my birthday as well as a half-full open 2-liter bottle of Sierra Mist that I lifted from a meeting. (Okay, I did buy it for the meeting, so technically, I didn’t “steal” it.)

Luckily, most people have orange juice, sugar, and often a couple of apples lying around the house. (I have about 20 extra apples from another peck that I bought along with the peaches.

Perfect. Let’s get to business.

I didn’t have much food in the house to make much of a dinner, but hey, I can make sangria! This happened to be one of my last toasts to summer, with its variety of fruit and alcoholic beverages. But if you happen to have the ingredients, this drink can bring you well into Fall.

Like many of my college recipes, this is for two servings/glasses and can easily be made with things you have around the house. You can use regular table red wine instead of Pomegranate wine, but it did add a really nice flavor.

Pomegranate and Peach Sangria: 2 servings

Ingredients:

1 cup of Pomegranate Wine (or red table wine)

1 mini-bottle of Bacardi white rum

½ cup Orange juice

About 4 oz of Lemon lime soda

Two ripe yellow peaches

1 tart apple, thinly sliced (I used honeycrisp)

½ of a Lime

1 heaping tbsp. White Sugar

Ice cubes

Directions:

Cut, pit, and slice one of the peaches into thin slices and set aside. Thinly slice the apple and leave a few slices aside for garnish.

Cut, pit, and quarter the other peach.

Completely crush the peach into a medium bowl.

Add sugar and mix.

Add rum, sliced apples and squeeze the lime into the bowl, mix and chill for 20 minutes in the freezer.

 Take out of the freezer and pour in orange juice. Stir.

Add wine into mixture and stir.

In two wine glasses, pour 2 oz. of soda in each glass.

Add four peach slices and four apple slices to each glass along with an ice cube.

Add equal amounts of the wine mixture to the glasses and stir. (Try to limit the peach pulp that goes into the glasses, if you can, strain the wine mixture before adding it to the glasses.)

Serve immediately and enjoy a last toast to summer and to cleaning out the fridge!

Love,

The College Cuisiner