The book was's La Seduction, about the different ways seduction shapes French life. Yes, I'm still on my Parisophilia kick, and the passage was this excerpt from an interview she conducted with Le Monde food critic Jean-Claude Ribaud:
His dessert, fruits poached in wine, was foolproof. "Nectarines, peaches, apricots -- fruits with pits -- it's enough to poach them in a Sauternes or a Barsac or a syrupy wine for ten minutes," he said. "The wine has so much power! It's sublime! I add a little bit of sugar because the wine gets more acidic when it's boiled down, and you have to give them a little sweet emotion."
On my home, I picked up nectarines and a half bottle of muscat (no Sauternes).
I propped the book open on the counter while I brought the wine to a simmer, then slowly poached the nectarines with a tablespoon of sugar, turning over and over gently until the wine had reduced by half and become a syrup, and their skins had blistered and split. I served them in their syrup over vanilla ice cream. Their flavor was more than the sum of nectarine + muscat + ice cream, as if a fourth element (bread pudding?) had sneaked in while my back was turned.
As Ribaud promised, they were sublime.
Image credit: David Lance Goines.
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