PEACH PERFECT

Simple desserts that celebrate the South's favorite stone fruit

- ANNE BYRN

In early August 1992, I was dashing out the door to fly to Boston to meet Julia Child. Yes, that Julia Child. She was about to celebrate her 80th birthday, and I had secured an interview at her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home. Before I left my Atlanta house and locked the front door, I panicked because this interview had come together so fast that I hadn’t thought of bringing her a hospitality gift.

I glanced at the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and quickly grabbed the largest, most fragrant Georgia peach, blushing deep coral red like those late-summer varieties do. Then I swaddled it in paper towels and placed it gently in my purse.

In Julia’s kitchen, we roasted chicken and tossed a green salad for lunch and sipped a chilled Sauvignon Blanc as we cooked. After the meal, I sheepishly pulled out the peach and said something like, “from my Georgia kitchen to yours.” Julia held my gift carefully like it was a newborn. She cooed about peaches in her warbling voice, how she loved the white varieties of France, and then she sliced it onto a plate for us to share.

That peach thrilled her—and saved me. Peaches do that. On their own, they can transform the simplest meals into memories. They leave their flavor behind in recipes for warm-weather preserves, boldly imprint their fragrance into homemade ice cream or pound cake, and fill cobblers and sonkers to the top of the pan effortlessly with all their wonderful juices. I just can’t imagine a summer without Southern peaches, whether cooking with them or devour-ing one as I lean over the kitchen sink so the sweet, tart juices are free to run down my arm to my elbow.