Up in Ontario

Sink Peaches, Basil Pesto

In the past week the annual harvest has started to arrive with some vigourousness here in Vancouver and the crop has already yielded some tasty highlights.

Sink Peaches

Sink Peaches have arrived from the Okanagan Valley orchards. What are Sink Peaches? Peaches so juicy you have to eat them over the sink, the juice slips out no matter how careful you are, dribbles down your chin and into the sink. You hardly need teeth to eat them.

My preferred method of eating a Sink Peach is to take a sharp knife and slide the tip in to the peach stone at the stem, perpendicular from the natural bulged line of the peach. Slice from the stem halfway around to the bum of the peach and curve the blade around in a straight line, maintaining contact with the stone, right back up to the stem where you started so that you've completed a full lap of the peach.

Remove the knife and grasp the two halves of the peach and twist gently. One half will pull away from the stone and you should eat this one right away, over the sink. The other half you should eat as soon as you finish the first half. Wiggle the pit a little and it will pull easily from the golden flesh. Do not hesitate before you lean over the sink and suckle back your second half or someone may ask for a bite and you do not want this, no matter how good of a sharer you think you are. Sink Peaches only last a short while and five minutes after you finish your first you'll crave your second.

I recommend buying one or two Sink Peaches for each day of the week, from the family with the stand on the west side of the Trout Lake farmer's market, who load up their truck at 2 am on Saturdays to drive into the city and arrive at the farmer's market for opening. The fellow behind the stand with the grey hair and the big hands will show you how to test the ripeness of the peaches and how to store them so they ripen, and his wife will weigh your bag and make change from your cash while offering you a slice of peach from a paper plate. As the week passes you can watch the peaches ripen on your countertop where they are placed stem down to ripen.

Basil Pesto

I've always wanted to make pesto and a little over a month ago, in an absent-minded wandering along a row of kitchen shops just up from the apartment, the Duck pointed out a handsome mortar and pestel set and I queued up to lay down some plastic for it. This past weekend I operated it for the first time, with some fine results. Who knew it was so easy? Mix:

• olive oil
• garlic
• basil
• your favourite cheese (perhaps, parmesan?)
• salt to taste

Then grind away. I suppose it goes without saying that the better the ingredients, the better the final product (the love should be extra virgin, the parm unpasteurized, the garlic fresh, the salt rocky, the basil as musky as a spicy skunk). When your arm gets sore, take a break and sip from the glass of cold, hoppy beer than you have handy. Then get back to the grinding. Use your own discretion with regard to amounts of each ingredient. Add as you go until you run out of something and then fine tune the mixture to pungent perfection.

Soon you'll have way less pesto than you hoped to have but it will taste incredible. Score a fine bagette and slice it into rounds. Spread the pesto on the rounds with the back of a spoon, top with a fresh garden tomato and eat. Or heat slowly (in the toaster oven, on the cool sections of the grill) and then eat. As they said in Big Night, "it tastes so good you want to kill yourself." But don't.