Hey Dad...

I forgot to say so on the phone, but the blackberries in the back are beautiful again this year. Great memories of picking them last summer. At the perfect stage of ripeness, so they were big, sweet and juicy for breakfast.

Last nectarine...

The last plate of breakfast fruit in Paris, a last portion of sweet, ripe white nectarines and rasberries. One of my all time favorite fruit kombos, a classic that just keeps tasting good, year in, year out. Sheer pleasure. Perfect with a madeleine and some ewe's milk yogurt.

I'm really going to miss the fruit. Damson plums, greengages, peaches, apricots, melons. Muscat grapes. All juicy, headily perfumed and sweet. Bought at the markets, the good, daily at Place de Alígre (Metro Ledru Rollin next time you're in the neighborhood) and the big Sunday market, that starts at Place Bastille. Chosen to be at the perfect stage of ripeness to eat for todays lunch or tomorrow evening.... Ohh the precision! and the quality it ensures!

dansk

Strawberries

The first locals. I ate them for dessert with the traditional cream and sugar after a dinner of new potatoes and asparagus. Soon there'll be roses and elderflowers blooming everywhere. Pre-summer...primordial force and soft, perishable beauty.

Pre-summer... another translation knot. One of the charms of the precious, short summer in my adopted country is it's dissection into phases - pre-summer, mid-summer, actually early summer, summer, late summer - the praises of which are sung in rich detail in classical Danish litterature, song and art.

dansk

Rhubarb compote with strawberries

Rhubarb - an ode to spring, I use it a lot from May to July, when it's in season. It's still a little early for local, this compote is made with German barb. For years, I boiled my rhubarb compote, until I saw a recipe, where it was baked. The baked tastes better the boiled, and is easier. I haven't boiled it since.

The rhubarb, I could get my hands on, was greenish, not one of the more red sorts, that give a nicer pink color when prepared. The compote is for a trifle, so I added some strawberries for color. An ok use for imported Spanish and Italien strawberries - they don't taste anything like fresh, local berries, but the illusion is seductive!

500 g. - about 1 lbs. - of rhubarb, in 1 cm. pieces
180 g. sugar
1 vanilla bean
250 g. strawberries, halved or quartered, optional

1. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Put the rhubarb in a cassrole in a layer about 2 cm. deep. Scrape the vanilla bean into the sugar and add the sugar to the rhubarb. Tuck the empty vanilla pod pieces under the rhubarb and cover the casserole with tin foil.

2. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the rhubarb is soft, but not yet mushy. Taste the compote as soon as it comes out of the oven. If it isn't sweet enough, add a little more sugar while it's still hot, so the sugar kan dissolve.

3. If you're using strawberries, add them, too, while the compote is still hot. They lose their rawness, but keep their shape and color. Rhubarb - and other fruit - compote is typically eaten cold as dessert in Denmark, with milk or cream poured onto it.

dansk