Peach Melba – Cooking a classic while crying quietly to myself.

Is this true classical cooking? While I cooked my first paté (and the second smooth one) and served it with Toast Melba, my Mum reminded me that Toast Melba, just like Peach Melba is named for Dame Nellie Melba, the hugely successful Australian Soprano. The paté (and the Toast Melba) turned out very well. So, I resolved to prepare the Peach Melba for Mum (and the rest of us) and show it to you all. It’s a really simple dish to prepare. You can do this while listening to Puccini’s La bohème. It is one opera that can, and often does, bring me to tears.

Ingredients lists don’t get much shorter than this.

You will need:

• Peaches
• Raspberries
• Caster sugar
• A small amount of butter
• Ice cream to serve

The raspberry sauce is an integral part of this dish. Use about three parts raspberries to two parts sugar (by weight). Add these and a small amount of water to a saucepan.

A good pouring shot helps a simple recipe along quite nicely.

Reduce until you have a nice consistency.

A nicely polished copper saucepan helps too. I love these colours.

Then pass the mixture through a sieve.

The hardest work is squeezing the best out of it with a spoon.

Put this in the fridge until needed. Half the peaches. Then add a small blob of butter to each.

This is hardly cooking at all. But, it is delicious.

Pop them in the oven and roast at 180ºC for 15 to 20 minutes, depending upon how hard your peaches are. Don’t use really ripe peaches, they will turn to mush.

I took them out just about the time that poor Mimi was beginning to expire. I love that opera.

Speaking of mush, On La bohème‘s release, management at the London Covent Garden took a view that it was a “new and plebeian opera”. Idiots.  Dame Nellie campaigned on the Opera’s behalf and helped change their minds about staging it and it has had generations (including myself) in tears ever since.

Serve the peaches with the ice cream and pour the raspberry sauce over.

One more pouring shot. This restored me and stopped the weeping.

This dessert is certainly neither new nor plebeian. So it seems we have a few things for which to thank the Dame. “Good on ya Nellie.” as they might say in her native Australia.