Our raspberries are coming on strong right now. They’re the seedless, red, everbearing kind.
They rank among my favorite top ten foods.
…Right up there with them is the Peach!
Peaches are interesting and they’re like most of my favorite foods: I couldn’t eat them all that often. There’s a “too much” flavor factor in peaches, for me. But one a day when they’re in season is just right.
It’s critical for peaches, like tomatoes, and, heck, raspberries, to pick em local and at just the right time. 90% of grocery peaches are BAD. (It’s lame of stores to offer BAD fruit. Since they’re so bad at quality control, I usually just bite or take a slice out of a peach in a batch I might buy from a store, to check. I don’t go to town every day. I suppose if one did that you could just return any lame or mealy peaches you bought the next day.)
I note that a raspberry isn’t ready to pick when it’s red. It needs to wait another day and get DARK red. It doubles in flavor and aroma in that time.
I also note that you want to eat berries and peaches at room temperature. Refrigeration locks in the flavor and aroma—big mistake!
I love eating these fruits just plain. And also on cereal, a flake cereal usually. But I also like to make occasional desert concoctions.
Last night I went a little wild.
I made a modest dish of a scoop of (tempered) passion-fruit sorbet, a scoop of (tempered) vanilla ice cream, a scoop of room-temperature berries and a diced-up peach. Then I drizzled a couple tablespoons of brandy over all. Oh my! Oh boy!
Is there a name for this one? I imagine that some king has already done it, in Paris…
