Eat a Peach
Peach season might be my favorite food season
There’s nothing quite like biting into a juicy peach.
When I was in elementary school, I remember visiting my grandparents in Okayama during summer breaks1. They would buy white peaches that grew ripe on the tree at a peach farm nearby. Those were about the juiciest peaches anywhere, and it was messy. And Grandma being a grandma, once she figured out that I liked peaches, she gave me a lot of them. Even accounting for the nostalgia factor, I think these are still the best peaches I’ve had.
I got back into eating a bunch of peaches in season when I moved to South Carolina in 2015. South Carolina produces more peaches than Georgia, the Peach State2. I could get great peaches at the farmers market, and I was eating just about a peach a day during parts of the summer3.
We try to get peaches regularly during the summer in Chicago now as well. We’ve had really good Midwest peaches (Mick Klüg Farm), or we can just get California peaches from the grocery store.
With our 1-year old, most fruits have been hit-or-miss—he would eat an apple sometimes, but not other times, for example. But we haven’t seen him not eat a peach, after he tried it once. Recently, he uttered his first unambiguous Japanese word when he pointed at a peach at the table and said momo (peach), demanding to have it. We’re realizing that we probably need 2 peaches for the 3 of us, because he would eat a whole peach if we let him.
As it turns out, he points to an apple and says momo as well, so momo might be a generic word for “fruit” for him at the moment…anyway, he likes peaches.
Then there’s cooked peaches, which is a different experience.
I vividly remember having grilled peaches at an Italian restaurant in Northampton, MA, that doesn’t exist anymore. Then there was the poached peach that came with almond torte at Chez Panisse.
As good as these were, I hadn’t cooked many peaches myself until recently, because, you know, raw peaches are so good. But I found a recipe I wanted to try in Listen to Your Vegetables by Sarah Grueneberg, my favorite Italian chef (at Monteverde4) in Chicago for some time. It’s a balsamic-glazed peach caprese salad.
The usual caprese is tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. In place of tomatoes, this uses peaches that you sear then dip in balsamic, and repeat that a couple times. The cooked side is hard, while the other parts are raw and soft, so this mimics the texture of tomatoes.
My wife, who usually doesn’t like sweet things in non-dessert dishes, really liked this. And our son demanded to eat more than one peach’s worth. So this could become a regular summer dish for us.
What I’m listening to now
I recently re-listened to Samba Rock by Trio Mocotó. Around 1970, Trio Mocotó was the backing band for Jorge Ben, an absolute legend in early Brazilian rock and samba-inspired popular music, and this is their release from 2001.
They play a mix of originals like “Os Orixás” and Brazilian classics like Jorge Ben’s “Adelita”. Their version of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Aguas De Março” is pretty unique in that they play almost all of the melody with a cuíca (friction drum that sounds like a monkey). They really nail the seemingly effortless groove you get with the best of Brazilian music.
Okayama is famous in Japan for white peaches and Muscat grapes.
I should note one thing about these trips. When we were small, my parents would be with my sister and me the whole way. But when I was old enough to be in school, the trip could go like this:
Our parents take us to the platform at Tokyo Station
My sister and I ride the Shinkansen for 3+ hours
Grandparents pick us up at the platform at Okayama Station
This was, and I believe still is, totally normal in Japan.
California produces far more, though.
The other fun food season in South Carolina is the soft shell crab season in spring, but it’s a lot more effort to cook a crab yourself than to bite into a peach. So that season was more about dining out and having the specials.
Monteverde was Grueneberg’s nickname in Italy because Monteverde and Grueneberg both mean “green mountain”. I think you’re part of my audience if you were tickled by that trivia.