JUST PEACHY

I am not one of those people who guards her enthusiasms jealously:  I positively enjoy something more if there are more people to share it with.   I have always kept quiet about my passion for flat peaches, just because for years I used to have to get them from my choice fruiterers, Michanicou in West London and Panzer's in North West London:  I felt I had to keep them to myself;  it seemed mean to wallow publically in something that so few had access to.  Now, O joy of joys, that has changed.  Flat peaches - known in the States as Donut Peaches, and I have, only once, seen them in France tagged peches beignets - are appearing in supermarkets as well as in specialist greengrocers.  They look slightly squished and bulbous, indeed like a doughnut, but in fact their taste is finer, more delicate and more elegant somehow than their nobler shaped counterparts.  Their skin is felty rather than fuzzy, and their white flesh is more compact somehow than normal peaches (they taste juicy but without the dripping) and the fruit itself fragrant, almost blossom-like, though others apparently detect almondiness instead.  These strangely beautiful fruit don't have a long season so now's the time to go on the prowl for them.
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