Vive La France!

La France Pears

Pears in Japan are generally the asian kind, and there are so many varieties that I can't keep track of each one's peculiarities. They start appearing at the markets towards the end of the summer and the different varieties keep on coming until late fall when apples and tangerines take over. I had never had an asian pear before coming to Japan, but I hadn't been that much of a western pear eater either. Before coming to Japan, between the years growing up in Brazil and those spent going back and forth between home in New Jersey and boarding school in Tennessee, I knew what a pear was, but I certainly didn't know that they had names like Bartletts and Boscs.

Japan is famous for its exorbitantly priced fruit. The attention to detail and the coddling each one of these fruits receives is extraordinary and more than explains their high price. Though mediocre to good fruit is available year round at most supermarkets, I generally manage to get through the year with my homegrown berries and figs along with some locally harvested fruits I am given or find at the farmer's market. As you might guess, the chance to eat one of these exceptional fruits is not an everyday occurrence so when it does happen, it leaves a deep impression. One such occasion was the time we received a box of exceptional mangoes from a friend in Okinawa. The details of that mango experience are forever etched in my mind and on my palate. My mouth waters just thinking about it even though it happened over fifteen years ago. Last month, I was once again delighted to receive a gift of magnificent Japanese fruit, a box of La France pears.  The bliss that came from biting into the velvety flesh of one of these perfectly cultivated pears suddenly opened a floodgate of memories taking me back to the first time I tasted a La France pear with close friends in Osaka over twenty years ago. This "Proustian moment" got me thinking about the great power that food, and aromas in general, have on our memories. It made me want to create food experiences that can carry people away to another time and place.

With the holiday season just around the corner, what aromas and flavors will stir up memories of Christmas Past this year?  I'm considering making eggnog for this year's celebrations. It would be the first time using my own chicken's eggs.  A homemade eggnog to warm the soul and evoke memorable Christmas choir parties that took place at the rectory of Grace Church Plainfield.  It might just make me homesick.  It will certainly make me miss gathering around the piano to sing carols.