an ode to peaches

peach tart, rosé chilled white peaches, notes on a perfect fruit

Welcome to mama eats, a twice-weekly newsletter (Tues. & Sat.) inspired by a simple + seasonal home life. This week’s post on peaches is partially a republish of a post I originally wrote in July 2019, edited and updated with a new recipe. The recipes for peach tart and pesche ubriache are free to all readers, and the recipe for white peaches poached in rosé is for paid subscribers. I try to provide as much free content as possible, however, this newsletter is a labor of love and I am a busy mother of three. If you have the means and find value in what I share, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which also gives you the benefit of access to the growing archive (posts over a month old) and recipe videos.

The last stretch of summer- tops of shoulders and bridges of noses kissed by the sun, the hills bleached golden, heat hanging thick like a blanket in the air. Everything buzzing and vibrating and bursting with life- at the market, in the vegetable garden, rivers and oceans and adventures. Life is full. Produce is excellent, especially the fruit. Peaches, plums, melons all siren songs with their fragrance and beauty.

Peaches are a firm favorite in my book, everything about them- their shape (“lovely bivalve roundnesses” DH Lawrence says¹), their colour, their sweet fragrance and honeyed flesh. Eating them leaning over the sink while the juices drip down your fingers and wrists and chin, a summer baptism.

There are so many varieties here, which happily means that the season is quite long. It extends all the way through August, ending with the O’Henrys (which are the king, in my opinion, although Sun Crest is a close second). We pick up a case every August from Boa Vista Farm, carrying on a family tradition. My grandpa used to drive to pick up crates of O’Henry peaches at the end of summer, wooden boxes corralling what seemed like hundreds of gorgeously curved blushing beauties. Pies, tarts, countless jars of canned halves sitting on newspaper on the counter to seal- everything peach would roll out of their kitchen until summer cried uncle and autumn came steadily creeping in. Each season has its pleasures, but to me, autumn coming always feels a little like when you finish a very good book and a lingering sadness follows you around for a few days after.

Patricia Curtan’s illustration for the peach section in Alice Waters’ cookbook, Chez Panisse Fruit, which says, “the perfect dessert after a rich and satisfying meal is a perfect piece of fruit, and the most perfect fruit has to be a perfect peach. Its texture is luscious, its aroma is intoxicating, its flavor is ravishing, and its juice runs everywhere.”

Back to the peaches: I usually favor yellow over white, yellow feels to me to have a richer, deeper flavor, sunlight condensed. I do enjoy white peaches too, though, for entirely different reasons, their floral smell and flavor reminiscent of honeysuckle, roses, and hot hot heat, intense honey. I had both types last week, a flat each because they looked so wonderful and I am a glutton for good fruit. The first day we ate them just so, over the sink or on the grass outside, fragrant juices baptizing chins. The next day I sliced them over our oatmeal in the morning, and for lunch, layered slices with tomato, olive oil, salt and basil as part of lunch with bread to sop up the juices. Then, at about 4 or 5 o’clock, our usual aperitivo time, I discovered a chilled bottle of Prosecco I had bought for some Aperol spritzes that had never been. Into a glass went slices of white peach and the aforementioned Prosecco, and it was so nice that I continued doing this each day until I ran out of white peaches.

The few yellow peaches that were left had gotten too soft to eat out of hand, so I baked them into a tart of sorts to salvage them from a compost fate, and they were perfect and the tart was just the thing to cap off my week of peach madness. Until the O’Henrys are back, that is.

pesche ubriache, drunk peaches

a small peach
a glass of chilled wine, sparkling or not

Peel the peach over the glass of wine and slice pieces into it. Let it sit a minute (or place in the fridge and enjoy a few hours later), then alternate sipping the wine with eating the slices. Or, drink the wine first, then eat the peach when the glass is empty. I think yellow peach and red wine go together nicely, while white, sparkling or rose are complementary to a white peach. For a non alcoholic version, try a sparkling water or kombucha.

press-in peach tart