I have thoughts

Welcome to the new blog everybody! This is where I’ll post the weekly menu, and highlight ingredients, farmers or dishes that I really think you should know about. This week it’s the Frutti di City buckle. In Italy, Frutti di Bosci mean “fruit of the forest” and it’s a combo of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, because Italy is paradise and these things are often found while wandering in the woods.

Atlanta being the city in the forest, and having a glut of local peaches and fat blackberries, my first thought when I friend told me she’d foraged some plums from “around the neighborhood” was Frutti di Bosci. So, Frutti di City. These plums are little and sweet, but just under the skins they’ve got some great tannins. I struggle with the best way to present local fruit for a buy-now-eat-sometime-later service: I need a way to keep it delicious and perfect, and the moment you cut and season fruit, you’re fighting the clock: sugars and water leach into dressings, the structure of the fruit itself collapses. So while my peaches might be perfect for a salad on Monday or Tuesday, by the time you eat them Friday, they’ll be dull, mushy shadows of their former selves.

So I put the fruit with some sugar and sage and lemon, let them release their beautiful juices, and turn them all syrupy and concentrated inside a sturdy sour cream poundcake with streusel topping. Buy it. Bake it. Eat it with a cup of coffee and feel loved.