Weekly Dish

In my adult life, I have had to learn to like many foods I snubbed as a child. Vegetables of all kinds, wheat bread, and eggs, just to name a few. I was a very picky eater.

One kind of food I never turned down, however, is fruit. My mom kept a bowl of apples, oranges, and bananas, and one of her favorite snacks was a ripe banana, sliced and covered with ice-cold milk. To this day, that is still the basic treatment most fruits in my house receive — I still love bananas and milk; strawberries and figs get a splash of cream; and tropical fruits like mango and pineapple, a drizzle of coconut milk. But my favorite fruit and fat combination is peaches and cream.

Perhaps it’s because peaches remind me so much of summer — after mornings at the pool, Mom would often drive us over to Landrum’s produce stand to buy the freshest ones our small town had to offer. It could also be that a version of peaches and cream has been my standard birthday dessert for as many years as I can remember. Whatever the reason, my passion for peaches has not wavered over the years, and one of the most welcome signs of summer here in Louisiana for me are the peaches that appear on Mr. Buddy Miller’s table at our Saturday farmer’s market.

Oh, sure, I occasionally throw them into a hot dessert, a crisp or a cobbler, and recently, I made them into preserves. But, truth be told, the freshest summer peaches at the height of their season should not be cooked. My mom said once that it hurts her feelings to see a fresh peach exposed to heat, and although I’ve been known to do it, I have to say that I agree.

Mom loves fruit as much as I do — that’s probably where I learned it — so when I started thinking of an appropriate birthday dessert to finish the dinner my siblings and I made to celebrate my parents’ lives last weekend, I had peaches on my mind. Because my parents were born only nine days apart, we almost always celebrate their birthdays together. This year, we volunteered to cook Sunday lunch, a job they have done joyfully for all our lives. And, I wanted to end our meal with birthday desserts both Mom and Dad would enjoy.

When it comes to sweets, Dad is easy: chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. In fact, last weekend, when my sister got out all of the ingredients to make his cake, she discovered that he’d eaten two squares of her baking chocolate. We had to substitute chocolate chips. Mom, on the other hand, is not so easy to pin down. She won’t come out and tell you what she wants because she doesn’t want you to go to any trouble on her behalf. Elizabeth did manage to get out of her that she might like something fruity, and this time of year in this part of the country, that means peaches.

I wanted something simple, a dessert designed to showcase the summer-fresh flavor of the fruit, and a way to pair it with a creamy texture. I ended up with a tart, a crumbly butter crust that fell apart, a layer of this creamy filling, and layers of fresh, sweet peaches. It tasted heavenly, but because the crust didn’t hold up, it wasn’t very pretty to look at after we cut it. The surprise sta of the show, though, was this simple creamy concoction — nothing fancy, but when paired with the bright, sunny sweetness of the peaches, it does its job: it brings out the best of the peach flavor. It’s so simple to mix up that I’ve been keeping some in my fridge for afternoon snacks. A bit decadent, perhaps, but summer won’t last for ever. Though, to be outside in Louisiana right now, you’d never know it; the heat is abysmally oppressive. So, if I indulge in an afternoon of cold peaches and cream now and again to try to combat that heat, I’ll call it enjoying what’s left of my summer. Which, as school starts next week, is quickly coming to a close. At least I have some peaches left to ease the transition.

Johanna, of The Passionate Cook, asked for local or regional specialties for this month’s edition of Sugar High Friday. This peach cream makes the best use of local peaches and is a tribute to the way we ate fruit in my house growing up. Call peaches and cream the local specialty of my childhood home.

Peach Cream

8 oz. sour cream
2 T. peach jam
2 T. brown sugar
1/2 t. vanilla

Whisk all ingredients together. Serve over fresh peaches, or spread in a baked pie shell with sliced fresh peaches on top.

Posted: Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 8:12 am Filed under: Something Sweet, Summer, Fruit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.