June 2000 Letter

SUMMER FRUIT

The smell of the first early nectarine or apricot puts me straight into summer.

Stone fruits are the glory of summer, and I've never had truly great ones outside of their local season. I guess I just don't like jet-lagged fruit. I think peaches and nectarines need to ripen to a certain point on their trees in order to develop their full, juicy, perfumed sweetness, and past that point they don't travel as well. So I enjoy them in an old-fashioned way. Nothing all winter and spring, then the gun goes off and it's stone fruit from Mother's Day till late September.

The best way to eat apricots, nectarines, peaches or plums is out of hand. When I buy these fruits at the farmers market, I always choose a few that are ready to eat immediately, and others that are a bit harder. If they are fragrant and heavy, they will finish ripening in a shallow basket on my kitchen table, spreading the perfume of summer through the air. The softer ones I eat right away, greedily, juices dripping through my hand into the kitchen sink.

As the amount and variety of summer fruit increases, I make desserts: fresh peach ice cream, cherry pie, nectarine fool, and my personal weakness, the clafouti with apricots. But cobblers and crisps are my favorites of the easy summer desserts, a hit with everyone from the pickiest kids to the most sophisticated adults. Cobbler can be served warm on a summer evening. It's what I think of as a 'porch dessert' - you can sit in a rocker or a porch swing and eat your cobbler out of a bowl, listening to the crickets.

The next morning, you can have leftover cobbler for breakfast. It's just sweetened stewed fruit and buttermilk biscuits on top - with a glass of milk it makes a fine breakfast, and you get credit with your kids for letting them have dessert first thing in the morning (and, you didn't have to make breakfast - a good deal all around).

If you have a fruit tree, or a generous neighbor with one, the time will come when you have too much fruit. An ambitious person can make jam or chutney then, but another way to deal with that surfeit is simply to stew the fruit and put it away in the refrigerator.

I peel and slice the fruit, put it in an enamelled pot with a bit of fresh lemon juice and some sugar, and simmer it for only about five minutes. Sometimes I add a pinch of cinnamon. I put the cooked fruit into the refrigerator and for the next week or so I can dip into it for an ice cream topping, use it as a base for a cold fruit soup, warm it up and spoon it over pancakes, or have a cobbler in the oven literally in minutes.

Fruit crisps are equally endearing, not the least for their very crispiness. I like using a mixture of rolled or steel cut oats and some chopped almonds or walnuts in the topping. Brown sugar and a dash of spice give an even more cookie-like flavor to a crisp.

The flavoring of the crumbly topping can be played with. Fresh ginger and a spoonful of molasses evoke gingersnaps, a good match with apples, bu that's anticipating another season. Try a drop of almond extract and some lemon rind to enhance the buttery crust on cherries or apricots. I also like cinnamon with peaches, as a change from vanilla.

At the other end of the spectrum from the cobbler family are the elegant summer desserts. These are served at the table, where they can be admired first, and then eaten on lovely dessert plates. Some are still very easy - cherries simmered in wine, for example, and served in a crystal glass with hard almond biscotti on the side, or panna cotta, pure white cream with just enough gelatin in it to hold a molded shape, and around it a delicate fruit sauce. For some mysterious reason, though panna cotta is mainly cream, it doesn't feel too heavy - just heavenly.

A recipe that you can use all summer and adapt to whatever summer fruit you have is a classic fruit tart. It takes a little more time than a cobbler, but it's a jewel - a beautiful and festive presentation that is as delicious as it looks.

My version of this tart (see New Recipes) is based on a slightly sweet pastry crust that is flavored with lemon zest. The pastry is rolled out, shaped in a false-bottom pan and pre-baked. A layer of sweetened cream cheese, also enlivened with lemon zest, is spread over the bottom. Perfect, fresh summer fruit is arranged on top of this, and the whole thing is chilled.

I made the tart recently with mixed berries - giant blackberries, red raspberries, and plump blueberries, mixed together and piled high. It is equally good with ripe nectarines, thinly sliced and fanned out in scallops or spirals, and lightly glazed with melted jelly. The same treatment could be applied to peaches, or sweet plums cut in quarters. A mosaic of apricot slices and pitted cherries would be lovely.

The last time I made this tart, it was for a friend's birthday. I put it on a large platter, and at the last moment placed a few roses and mint sprigs from my garden around the rim. It was gorgeous, and tasted great, giving no hint of how utterly simple it was to make. Think of it for graduation parties, wedding showers, or any of the events that fill our calendars this month. In July, it's back to the porch in shorts and sneakers.

June 2000 recipe