• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 437 0

than four thousand years for its erotic qualities: its shape, the delicate down of its surface, as well as its flesh-like tones. It came originally from China, where it was considered both a symbol of immortality and of female genitalia. A bride was called a peach, and even today the expression “She’s a peach” isn’t entirely out of fashion.

Our son Theo worked for three summers at a local peach stand, sorting and selling. He learned:

• To reach maximum sweetness, peaches must ripen on the tree. Those sold at supermarkets have often been picked too early and then shipped.

• A ripe peach will yield slightly to finger pressure. Those much softer will spoil quickly.

• Size doesn’t matter.

• Both yellow and white peaches are good for eating fresh. Yellow are better in pies and can be bought a bit harder for easier slicing since they’ll soften during baking. White are better in Bellinis (in the opinion of his more knowledgeable customers).

Bellinis might taste best in Venice overlooking the Grand Canal, where they were invented at Harry’s Bar in the 1930s, but nevertheless:

BELLINI

2 ounces fresh white peach purée

Dash of lemon juice

6 ounces chilled champagne

Stir the lemon juice into the purée, place in a champagne glass, and add the champagne. Makes one Bellini.

DIAMOND JIM BRADY

1856. James Buchanan Brady, later to be celebrated as “Diamond Jim” and a legendary eater, is born in New York. The son of a saloon keeper, he became a wealthy, though not upper-class, figure in the city, with diamonds on his tiepin, cuff links, and canes, the result of advice he had been given as a youth that to make money you had to look like money, and nothing looked more like it than diamonds.

Large and convivial, Brady had a famous friendship with Lillian Russell, a singer and actress with a notable figure and appetite. Meals were more copious in those days. At dinner, Diamond Jim Brady would eat several dozen oysters, some crabs, turtle soup, two entire ducks, half a dozen lobsters, a sirloin steak, some terrapin, and for dessert, a platter of pastries and candy. The owner of his favorite restaurant, Rector’s, called him “my best twenty-five customers.” He died at the age of sixty-one.

GUACAMOLE

Known to the early Aztecs, guacamole is one of the few genuine Mexican foods found north of the border. A favorite for its luxurious taste, it is a more or less perfect harmony of avocado, tomato, salt, and onion or chili. It’s good anytime and before any meal—perhaps excluding breakfast—as an hors d’oeuvre or even appetizer, but seems especially good in summer.

There are endless variations, depending on the proportions, the consistency, and the tastes of the cook. Bill Benton, a poet who grew up in Galveston and lived for a time in Santa Fe and who is our guide in these matters, introduced us to the recipe from Ronald Johnson’s Southwestern Cooking: New and Old, on which we base our own. We make it spicier.

GUACAMOLE

2 ripe avocados, peeled and pitted (save the pits)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

½ cup scallions, minced, including part of the green

1 tomato, peeled and diced small

1 small clove minced garlic

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon chili powder

8 or more drops Tabasco sauce

Cut the avocados in half lengthwise, twist the halves apart, remove (and keep) the pit, scoop out the flesh, and mash until slightly chunky. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Add all the other ingredients and mix to the consistency you prefer. Taste seasoning.

Place the pits into a bowl with the guacamole and cover with plastic wrap laid directly on the surface. Allow to stand for ten to fifteen minutes to blend. The pits and lemon juice help to keep the avocado from darkening—it’s the air that causes this—but guacamole should be served within an hour of being made. Serves about four.

BLACKOUT

2003. At 4:11 p.m., the kitchen lights slowly dim and then go out, one small failure in the enormous power blackout that sweeps across the Northeast from Ohio to New York. At first it seems just a local