Book Review: "How to Eat a Peach" by Diana Henry

    The best things in life are simple: savoring the little things, a sense of place, good food, friends and family. When a friend asked if I could help sell her family’s Palisade peaches at the Saturday farmer’s market, it felt like a good way to find these pleasures all in one place. The market brings out a true community vibe once a week throughout the summer – a place to see your neighbors, adopt a pet, register to vote, talk to a firefighter, peruse the work of local artists and, best of all, find the tastiest locally grown food around. It’s worth it just to watch someone discover the flavor of an heirloom tomato or a freshly picked peach.
   
​    Diana Henry’s recent book “How to Eat a Peach” captures this feeling of slowing down and enjoying food, creating menus that use local ingredients and are appropriate for the season. The title comes from Henry’s first trip to Italy in her early 20s. Dining in the heat of the evening at an outdoor restaurant, the table next to hers was given peaches for dessert which they sliced themselves and dropped into their cold glasses of moscato. The wine-soaked peaches, Henry remembers, were “a lovely way to end a meal – seasonal, straightforward, caring, even a little magical … those peaches became a symbol of what good food is all about.”

    The first thing you notice when you pick up this book is that your fingers are immediately given the sensation of holding a peach. There is a soft, fuzzy, tactile quality to it; a book made with such care is really refreshing in our digital world. The entire book, recipes and photographs alike, speaks to a nostalgia for this sensory, old-world aesthetic. It creates an atmosphere you want to step into: a white linen tablecloth in a warm afternoon light, sun-dappled bowls of peaches, worn wooden tables with fresh-baked loaves of bread.

Diana Henry is an acclaimed food journalist and James Beard Award winner, and though she is from Northern Ireland, the recipes in this book take you on a culinary road trip around the Mediterranean from France, Italy and Spain to Istanbul and Morocco and further afield to San Francisco- and New York-inspired menus. She is drawn to the idea of a set menu that is perfectly balanced to tease you along and pique your appetite. “I don’t invite people over and then wonder what I’ll cook. I come up with a menu and then consider who would like to eat it.”

The recipes in “How to Eat a Peach” aren’t overly complicated, though they do appeal to an adventurous chef who would like to expand the possibilities of flavor. They are inspired geographically but arranged seasonally. Under the spring and summer sections, you’ll find a menu perfect for when it’s too hot to cook or one that is reminiscent of her Tuscan travels. Roast tomatoes, fennel and chickpeas with lemons and honey, or cherries in wine with cardamom cream and pistachio shortbread are some of her flavorful combinations. In the autumn, one menu includes duck with sweet-sour plums paired with pear, blackberry and hazelnut cake.
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I’m inspired to attempt some of these delicious-sounding recipes, though in the end I feel the best way to eat a peach is still the simplest: pick a soft sun-ripened peach straight off the tree, or out of a basket at the local farmer’s market, and take a juicy, mouthwatering bite.

-Nathan Child

This review originally appeared in the Aspen Daily News on Thursday, August 16th, 2018.

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