Fruit for dessert

Let's be honest. All of us know "we should." If we're going to have dessert, we SHOULD have fruit. And how many of us play the game of "hey, it's apple pie. That's fruit," or "well, I'm having strawberry ice cream." I will admit to having done this myself. It's a neat sort of way of trying to ameliorate (dontcha love that word), a situation that we "know" is bad for us. I have "know" in quotes, because it ain't always so. Can you say it's a "binge" or an "indulgence," for example, if you've had a chicken ceasar salad, with very little dressing, and follow it with a scoop of ice cream? Is the "crime" the same size, if your dinner was broiled fish, steamed rice and asparagus, as it is if you have a rib eye steak, a baked potato with butter, and hollandaise at the asparagus, if you follow it with a piece of fruit pie?

To my cook and eater's mind, the only time that there is a "crime" committed around dessert is if you're eating it because you feel you "have to." In other words, if you have a sense that a meal is not a meal without dessert, then there's a problem. I do see it a lot, and I was guilty of it for years. "Oh here's the dessert menu, what will I have," rather than "oh here's the dessert menu, do I want one?" If we shift our way of thinking about dessert, I think we would all be happier.

I don't know if it's still true, so many things change, but I was taught that, in Italy, if you have "dessert" at the end of a meal, it's fruit. Period. If you want something more complex, then you go out. I think that perhaps one of the reasons why we here in the United States don't do the fruit for dessert thing more often, is because we frequently settle for fruit that is just plain tasteless. If you've got your mouth set for something sweet and juicy, and you bite into a peach that will crack your tooth, and taste like cotton, well, no wonder you're rooting around in the freezer for that container of ice cream you KNOW is there.

It takes work. Believe me, I know. But when you succeed, there are few things that are better than a simple fruit dessert.

Last night, when we had two people over for a cooking lesson and a dinner, we put together a simple dessert. I want to encourage everyone to do desserts like this, instead of buying ice cream, with a zillion preservatives in it, or a cake that really has no taste, or cookies that taste of sugar only. It is the season when fresh fruit is abundant. And enjoy it, as much as you can.

Here's what we did. I had picked up the first blueberries of the year, and we used about two times as many blueberries as we did strawberries. The strawberries were small, and dead ripe (perhaps even a bit OVER ripe. And a fruit dessert like this is a perfect place to use them). All we did was combine two pints of blueberries, with a pint of hulled strawberries, left whole, and about a third of a cup of sugar. We let that sit for half an hour or so. We took some rose geranium leaves off of my plant, tore them up, and stirred them into the fruit. Then, just before serving, a nice scoop of creme fraiche went on the fruit.

Now, think about those components for a minute. Blueberries by themselves would have been fine. So would have strawberries. Or raspberries, or blackberries, or any other small, berry fruit. We could have used cherries if we wanted to, but there, to get the effect of the sugar (called "maceration"), we probably would have needed to pit them, and cut them in half. Your choice.

Sugar is a must here, but you could use brown sugar, or even honey. The rose geranium leaves were a conceit, I must admit. They are a bit "fey" as it were. But an herb, like a mild mint, or even a stronger one, like rosemary, is nice with fruit. If you don't have them, try a bit of vanilla, or a sweet vinegar (balsamic or apple cider). The key thing is to let everything sit for a little while to release the juices and soften.

Creme fraiche? Yes, it does put it over the top. You don't have to use it, and perhaps we shouldn't have. But we ate relatively normal sized portions of everything, so it wasn't that big an indulgence. We could have used yogurt, or sour cream, or - DUH- a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

I will say that this was one of the best desserts I have had in a long, long time. Yes, the fruit was excellent quality, but the most important thing in eating is to be enjoying yourself thoroughly. If you're eating with good friends, everything is going to taste better.

So, if you're wary of serving dessert to your friends, just try this one. Improvise on the ingredients, but not on your friends. Gather the best quality you can find: both ingredients, and friends. They'll improve each other. Trust me on this one.