I like simple old-fashioned desserts. One of my favorites is peach melba. Firstly, peaches are one of the few fruits I really enjoy eating. (It’s a really short list: peaches, mangosteens, clementines, berries, musk melon, and mangoes. Oddly enough, while I’m not a great fruit eater, I love drinking fresh juices.) Secondly, my mother use to make peach melba for my brother and me when we were really young.
A traditional peach melba, as invented by the great Escoffier in 1892, consists of peach halves, served with vanilla ice cream and topped with a sweet raspberry sauce. My mother’s version is a bit of a departure. She topped hers with vanilla ice cream, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, peanuts and whipped cream. Not especially authentic but delicious nonetheless, especially for a kid with a sweet tooth.
S and I picked up some lovely peaches from our favorite fruit seller this past weekend. I decided to use one of them to make my own easy-peasy-Japanesey peach melba. My plan was to simply slather S’s lovely vanilla ice cream over the peeled peach halves and devour it with some whipped cream while watching America’s Next Top Model (I know, I know… not really intellectual fodder, but it is fun!). However, when I told S my plans, she quickly convinced me that my dessert should be as beautiful as it is delicious.
She had some chocolate mayo cake leftover from her Bavarian timbale; amazingly, it was also still very fresh. She cut a small round from it with a metal ring. She then used the same metal ring to shape some vanilla ice cream, which she placed over a thin disk of the chocolate mayo cake. A peach half went on top of this and to really make me happy, she drizzled some chocolate sauce over the whole thing. I also made a small batch of whipped cream, which I liberally spread over the peach right before digging in. It was wonderful.
While totally unrelated to food, I’ve decided to include a photo I just took of our younger Golden Retriever Alix. After coming home from work last night, S–who likes to do this every 6 months or so–asked me to help her re-arrange the furniture in our living room. She likes the novelty of regularly changing the seating arrangements in and tweaking the look of our apartment. This way, she argues, we get the experience of new things without actually having to buy anything. Our most recent arrangement has resulted in our coffee table being taken out of the living room and parked in our store room. This has, in turn, opened up quite a bit of empty floor space, which Alix immediately decided was her territory and flopped down in. And stayed in for the next hour or so, all the time looking very pleased with herself. I just couldn’t resist snapping a picture of the pleased pooch and posting it.
About Aun Koh
Aun has always loved food and travel, passions passed down to him from his parents. This foundation, plus a background in media, pushed him to start Chubby Hubby in 2005. He loves that this site allows him to write about the things he adores--food, style, travel, his wife and his three kids!