Peach Season
I just returned from the fridge for the third time in three hours. My lips are sticky, raspy. It's peach season again, a time when these local delectable fuzzy drugs enter the supermarkets and fruit markets on nearly every corner of this city, in this great province that yields some of the best peaches on earth. Each august it is the same: big baskets of peaches in wooden bushel baskets, some small, some large but always delicious. I try to buy four at a time, sometimes three. If I buy an entire basket I am asking for trouble. Yesterday I managed four and now they are all gone. I left them in the fridge for an hour to let them cool slightly - for peaches are like wine susceptible to temperature, exposure to air and the way in they you consume them. The first peach was soft to the touch. My first bite was perfect: sweet as a mango to the core, the flesh even in consistency, and the skin slightly bitter. The flesh was a deep orange and it fell from the pit without force. The second peach was firmer, bitterer. But a firm bitter peach is a nice way to balance off the sweetness of the previous peach - and give a more satisfying meal because it requires more chewing and effort to consumer whereas the first peach was sweet, and fell apart in my mouth giving it the sense of dessert. The third peach I slicked with a knife, cutting it in 8 lengthwise slices and then pulling them off one by one. Eating a peach in this way allows you to treat the peach like an Hors D'oeuvres, slowly and carefully. Being in the fridge the longest, these slices were cool to the tongue, giving them the likeness of champagne, but the full body feeling of a good chardonnay.
posted by Mike at 4:25 PM
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