Leave no stone fruit unturned

If you were lucky enough to grow up with fruit trees in the garden, you’ll know that shop-bought peaches and apricots never taste quite the same. The harvest from my mother’s garden in Calvinia included blushing Elberta peaches, sweet Kakamas cling peaches, rosy apricots and a crop of plums so heavy that some branches would break under the weight. This was before the drought in the Hantam came to take my mom’s trees, one by one, like a raptor that had discovered the chicken coop.

But in the abundant years, the drying racks on the sunny side of the house would groan under the weight of halved peaches and apricots, and there was simply no room to squeeze in another piece of fruit. My mom also made fruit rolls: she would spread the fruit paste onto wooden boards to a thickness of 1 cm, then her handiwork would be left in the sun for days until it was ready to be rolled up for the pantry

The scent of a ripe peach still makes me yearn for those days. That’s the interesting thing about stone fruit: you really have to smell them before you see them – that’s at least half the pleasure.

I’m not mad about warm fruit, but I do find the English way of baking slightly unripe and less sweet fruit with sugar under