Nectarines with Fresh Cream and Mint

It was only as I asked Michael to pick up whipping cream from the grocery store tonight that I realized the power that one ingredient has in bringing a festive feeling to an evening in our family. Cream has become sort of a thing in our little extended family here in Dublin. It’s the one thing a family dinner or a celebration can’t be without. In fact, we’re all so subconsciously aware of it that each one of our families arrives to my in-laws with it in our bags, no matter what we’ve been asked or offered to bring for a meal.

It’s an odd thing, certainly, that freshly whipped cream is the symbol of celebration (large or small) for our family, but it always signifies that we all have just a little extra time to sit around the table with coffee and dessert, chatting and laughing. It’s also something a little quintessentially Irish that each of us Americans has latched onto over the last few years in Ireland and taken on as our own tradition. It’s slow, and authentic and a little decadent.

I don’t think I’ll ever stand with a hand mixer over a bowl of cream without remembering the exact bowl my mother-in-law reserves for the cream in her house. It’s the one in these photos, deep blue and high-sided so you don’t get splattered, chipped a little from years of use.

Tonight, it’s just the two of us, still squatting in my in-law’s house while we wait for our house buying process to sputter to a halt. Dinner was quiet because we’re running out of things to say to each other that don’t start with “When do you think we’ll have the keys?” While Michael enjoyed the last of the evening sun, I stood at the counter and chopped nectarines and mint. I got out the old-school hand beater, poking a skewer into the electrical outlet so the ancient two-pronged appliance would rev up. Ten minutes later, cream and the smallest two person celebration of a normal Thursday evening in an Irish summer.  This isn’t really a recipe, but I dare say that if you chop ripe nectarines and a few sprigs of mint, and serve it in little bowls with dollops of freshly whipped cream, it may as well be one.  Coco would like me to make a small edit. Celebration for three, please, not two.  There’s no trick to this, but the cream has to be fresh, and you must whip it with just the smallest amount of white sugar. And you must be ready for a little celebration and that extra bit of time over the table.

Bon apétit!