Eastside Road, July 6, 2014—
JUNE WAS THE MONTH of apricots, my favorite fruit. Well, figs. Mulberries. Nectarines. But truly I do believe apricots are my favorite fruit, and that probably dates back to the summer of 1943, when I was eight years old, just learning about the intellectual aspects of the pleasures of the flesh, and we had a big apricot tree in the back yard. Maybe not. Maybe I'm romanticizing.Anyhow, apricots. What you see here is a bowl of chopped and slightly warmed peaches, but the ice cream at the center is noyau ice cream, which Lindsey made in her little freezer, and flavored with the pits of the apricots we've had in the last couple of weeks — many or most of them Royal Blenheims bought at the Healdsburg farm market, but eight or ten of them from our own tree, which gave its first harvest this year.
If apricots are my favorite fruit, then their kernels may be my favorite part of them. The flavor is floral, stone-fruity, but goes beyond those dimensions into further recesses. There's something chthonic about them. Perhaps it's only in my mind; only because I know there's danger lurking in them — strychnine or arsenic, I never really remember which.
In any case it was a marvelous dessert, capping a really fine summer dinner. Lindsey made her cucumber salad, and cooked potatoes and fava beans, and sliced tomatoes, and prepped the salmon Nancy Hachisu's way, dotting it with butter, laying scallions on top of the flesh, and wrapping the fish carefully in aluminum foil.
I joked that I did the cooking, she did the prep. But as usual it was the prep that constituted everything, from the conception of the total menu to the gruntwork of cleaning, chopping, measuring (by eye, not tool!), timing (so important, and utterly eluding all my attempts). All I did was make a fire and slice the eggplant and grill it
It was a splendid dinner. We were happy to share it, and the conversation, and a few bottles, with a couple of friends. I wish we could do this twice a week. Cook might object. Oh well: I'll post this, and then get back to the dishes…
Roussane, Preston of Dry Creek, 2012; Rosé, La Ferme Julien; rosé, "Whispering Angel", Caves Désclans (Côtes de Provence), 2012 (thanks, Burt and Mary)
1 comment:
Nostalgia is an important component of food.
Most people remember how they liked (or didn't) their parents' cooking.
My mom dreamed of being more creative in the kitchen, but was married to a man who believed in bland flavors, and convenience, or a big piece of meat. She's have enjoyed living a couple of generations later, during our foodie culture. Alas. But she did certain dishes perfectly, one of them being pies.
Our house had a plum tree in the back yard, the kind they call, I think, "friar's plums"?--with dark purple flesh. Eating them ripe, right off the tree, was a big treat. Neighbor kids would steal them.
It took years before I began to find these dark meat plums in grocery stores. Berkeley Bowl now has them in season, and I greedily snap them up. Much better than the white or yellow fleshed plums.
Another neat thing is to make pineapple upsidedown cake. I was never much for fruit cakes as a kid, but that one got me.
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