What’s in it for me? Travel around the world, one meal at a time.
Have you ever become restless, and wished you could expand your culinary horizons? And do you wish you could host elaborate dinner parties for friends, but feel like you don’t have the skills?
If so, the blinks to How to Eat a Peach are required reading for you. You’ll learn about how adventurous chef Diana Henry creates delicious menus for every occasion, from a sleepy lunch at home to a festive summer banquet. But even more, you’ll learn about how she sees the world through food. Henry has been travelling since she was a teenager, and her cooking is formed by the places she’s visited and lived in. Her menus capture the exhilaration of being in Mexico City at night, the pleasures of being on holiday on the Normandy coast, and the sensual shock of arriving in the bustle of Madrid.
The idea of having a dinner party can be intimidating because it sounds so formal, conjuring up images of starched white cloths and polite conversation. In these blinks, you’ll learn that the best dinner parties actually happen in messy kitchens with plenty of cocktails. Good food doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy; it’s just about choosing quality ingredients and preparing them with care.
In these blinks, you will learn
how to make a delicious roast chicken from just two ingredients;
why a peach dessert shaped Henry’s entire cooking philosophy; and
how spicy food can help to ease a broken heart.
Travel shaped Henry’s DNA as a chef.
Most 16-year-olds devote their time to scrawling angsty love notes in their diaries. Not Diana Henry. If an inquisitive friend had peeked into her notebooks at the time, they would have found recipe after recipe. Henry was keenly attuned to food from a young age. She carefully observed all the meals her mother prepared, and spent hours poring over Cordon Bleu cooking magazines.
For Henry, food was a way of getting to know the world even before she was able to travel. She grew up in Northern Ireland, which was isolated from the rest of Europe; travel was cumbersome and expensive. By poring over exotic dishes from the rest of the world, Henry wasn’t only learning about food. She was learning about other ways of life.
The key message here is: Travel shaped Henry’s DNA as a chef.
When she was fifteen, she had the chance to travel to France as an exchange student. Finally, she could immerse herself in the country she’d dreamed so much about. French people’s devotion to food was a revelation. She watched as families with meager incomes devoted large parts of their paychecks to buying the perfect cheese, or spent a whole afternoon baking their own bread. Henry’s devotion to preparing food with the very best ingredients can be traced right back to that formative trip.
But her travels didn’t end in France. Henry is as much an explorer as she is a chef, and the way she explores is through food. Her recipes are experiences transmuted into meals. The soft exuberance of an Italian summer night is reconfigured into a fizzy raspberry champagne cocktail with a melon and goat cheese salad. The sensual shock of Madrid plays itself out in her recipe for jet black pulpo rice with blood-red romesco sauce. The euphoria of a trip to Mexico City while nursing a broken heart can be tasted in every zingy mouthful of sea bass ceviche and ginger-lime mango slice.
Food is sensual, and emotional. But it’s also all about stories. And there’s no better way to tell a story than through a set menu: a succession of dishes designed to be eaten together. In her teenage notebook, Henry didn’t only collect recipes. She also spent ages planning special meals that she would prepare for her bemused friends, who couldn’t understand why they were eating in candlelight, or what pineapple water ices were exactly.
Today, Henry is still most renowned for her carefully designed set menus, and her diners are now a lot more appreciative than those teenage friends were.
Dinner parties should be all about having fun.
When you think of serving an elaborate three-course menu, you might imagine a group of people solemnly gathered around a white table cloth, sniffing their wine before they drink it and eating dainty morsels off china plates.
But that’s not what Henry envisions when she’s planning a meal. She grew up in an Irish family that loved food, but never hosted what they called dinner parties. Rather, they had parties that included lots of food, as well as loud chatter and good whiskey and dancing around the living room to Frank Sinatra.
The key message here is: Dinner parties should be all about having fun.
Henry’s belief that eating should be a festive occasion explains why each of her menus begin – and often end – with a festive alcoholic drink. Accompanying her meals with a homemade cocktail is one of her trademarks.
And her belief that food is meant to be enjoyed in a social setting also informs how she cooks. For example, she has a golden rule that no more than two courses of any meal are prepared last minute. There’s nothing worse than being stuck in the kitchen frantically stirring sauces while your guests wait for you at the table.
She also tries to ensure that her food facilitates conversation, instead of interrupting it. Funnily enough, that means not making food that is too complicated or obviously spectacular. Being showered with compliments as a chef is nice, but it means that people are fixated on the dishes, and aren’t just enjoying being together.
Her southern Italian supper menu is an excellent example of this low-fuss, high-deliciousness type of meal. It contains only one dish that should be prepared last minute: the spaghetti with mussels, shrimps and tomato sauce is cooked in little paper parcels in the oven and needs to be served piping hot. But all the other courses can be made in advance.
The fennel taralli – knotted bread rolls – can be made up to a week before. The starter of creamy burrata cheese with roast pepper and anchovies can be prepared in advance and assembled last minute. And the creamy homemade ice cream of candied lemon peel, ricotta and pistachio only needs to be taken out the freezer.
By carefully preparing most ingredients in advance, Henry is able to serve a decadent meal and still be the life of the party.
Menus should balance rich, creamy dishes with light, fresh flavors.
One of the first menus that Henry made as a budding young cook consisted of buckwheat blinis swimming in butter, cream and smoked salmon; guinea fowl breasts with a creamy red wine sauce, and a soufflé to end. It was a rich creamy meal from start to finish without a fresh vegetable in sight!
Today, her tastes tend towards the lighter end of the scale. Most of her meals include only one course containing cream, and she makes sure to keep her food fresh with sharp flavors, citrus fruits, and fresh herbs. And almost every meal will feature a fresh green salad.
The key message here is: Menus should balance rich, creamy dishes with light, fresh flavors.
When she was living in France, Henry learned to value the bowl of simple greens served after the main course. While it looks like there’s nothing to it, a green salad needs to be made with care. You should always buy whole heads of lettuce as they’re fresher, and make sure to wash and dry your salad leaves thoroughly – if wet, the vinaigrette won’t cling to the lettuce. The best dressing is a simple mix of oil and vinegar, but here again – it takes care to get the right balance of acidity. Keep tasting as you make it!
Some of her salads are more complex, combining fruit and different vegetables. In an Italian-inspired menu Henry begins the meal with a fennel, celery and apple salad with pomegranates and toasted hazelnuts and a lemony vinaigrette. The clean, sharp flavors are a perfect combination with the decadent and creamy wild mushroom vincisgrassi – a kind of lasagne – to follow. In a midsummer menu, Henry combines crispy matchsticks of beetroot and carrots with cool garlicky yoghurt.
Although she’s been known to go for a rich chocolatey end to a meal, most of the time Henry chooses light, fruity desserts. For example, she completes a late summer menu with a compote of raspberries, blackberries and figs served in a syrupy late-harvest riesling. The citrusy flavor of her pink grapefruit and basil ice cream adds a sweet tartness to a dinner of spinach gnocchi and roast lamb.
Coming up with a good menu is all about balance – which Henry knows. Creamy indulgence tastes even better alongside tangy, fresh flavors.
Eating seasonally is not only more ethical, it also makes for better meals.
The benefits of seasonal eating are now widely accepted. Not only is locally sourced food more ethical in terms of environmental impact, it also tastes better.
Henry has believed in these principles long before they were fashionable, but she also has another reason for eating seasonally. For her, meals are not only about food; they’re events. Seasonal factors like the weather and even the fragrances wafting in from the garden will influence these events because they affect what people feel like eating.
The key message here is: Eating seasonally is not only more ethical, it also makes for better meals.
In order to celebrate the start of the season, Henry chooses some of her favorite produce that’s only available at that specific time of year. For example, for a spring meal she concocted a starter of green asparagus with a homemade pistachio pesto, fresh radish and green peas. Eating that, you can practically feel the freshness of spring unfurling.
And no summer meal would be complete without the tangy sweetness of apricots. To celebrate the start of the warm months, Henry created a meal around the glory of an apricot and almond tart. The meal begins with two starters: moreish zucchini, ricotta, and pecorino fritters and a delicate salad made with sea bass crudo with radishes and nasturtium flowers.
As a main course, Henry roasts a whole chicken with lemons. After bashing the lemons with a rolling pin to soften them, and then pricking them all over, they’re inserted whole inside the chicken. Add some salt and pepper and voilà, it’s good to go. As it bakes, the lemon creates delicious juices which mingle with the natural fat of the chicken to create a tasty sauce.
And then, of course, there’s the apricot and almond tart to finish. Apricots contain an acidity that balances sugary flavors, and cooking brings out the best of them. Even the most uninspiring apricots get a rich honey sweetness when baked. The dessert is a perfect end to a mid-summer meal.
The season doesn’t only dictate what products are available; it informs how we feel and what we want to eat. Meals planned around fresh local products can help to fulfill these seasonal cravings.
The best dishes are daringly simple.
On her first trip to Italy, Henry was eating dinner outside on a summer evening when she noticed a waiter carrying a bowl of peaches over to the diners at a neighboring table. Everybody took a peach and then cut it up, dropping the slices into a glass of chilled Moscato wine. They left the slices to muddle in the wine for a while, then ate them and drank the peach-infused wine.
Henry was enthralled; the dessert had been savored as if it were the most complicated piece of patisserie, but it hadn’t required any cooking, or even chopping. At the same time, it had been served with the utmost care and attention to detail. Everything was perfect, from the quality of the peaches to the glasses they were served in.
The key message here is: The best dishes are daringly simple.
This experience came to symbolize Henry’s philosophy that good meals are created with simple ingredients served with attention to detail. It was a philosophy Henry kept coming back to when she found herself being momentarily swayed by food fads like nouvelle cuisine which involved chefs creating finickity gels and assembling plates of microscopic food with tweezers.
As an ode to the peach dessert, Henry has created a special menu. It’s a perfect summer dinner that sums up her approach to preparing meals using the best ingredients with minimum fuss.
To set the tone, she serves a Summer Sandal – a fizzy, fruity cocktail prepared with strained raspberries. To follow, she serves toasted sourdough bread topped with a paste of green fava beans, garlic, lemon, and mint.
As a starter, she serves a juicy wedge of cantaloupe melon with creamy goat cheese and a lavender – red wine dressing. The main course consists of a whole fish roasted in the oven with fennel and served with garlicky anise aioli and roasted tomatoes.
And then, finally, comes the famous dessert which inspired the meal: white peaches served whole alongside a bottle of delicious chilled dessert wine like Moscato.
This isn’t a pretentious meal, but it is a careful one. Every ingredient belongs on the plate, and every dish is perfectly prepared.
To try out this menu for yourself, check out our bonus blink at the end for a more detailed description of the menu.
Henry’s menus reveal how varied French cuisine can be.
When we think of French food we may think of some classics, like snails in garlic or boeuf bourguignon. But there’s so much more to it than that. Each region of France has its own delectable specialties, drawing on local produce and cooking traditions. Henry has travelled all over France, intent on discovering the tastes of every region. Her menus are steeped in these specific experiences and have an exacting regional specificity.
For example, a menu inspired by carefree holidays at the seaside in Brittany pays tribute to her memories of eating oysters with sourdough bread from a roadside stall in the wild wind, with the tang of the sea in the air.
The key message here is: Henry’s menus reveal how varied French cuisine can be.
She starts the meal with an artfully simple starter: leeks steamed until just perfectly tender and then dressed with a breton vinagrette of white wine vinegar, olive oil, capers and herbs. The leeks are followed by rich homemade pork rillettes and a large dish of mussels with cream, garlic, parsley and white wine. To finish, she serves a paper-thin crepe, with caramelized apple and thick cream. The pleasures of a seaside holiday are captured in this one meal.
To encapsulate her experience of visiting the Lot Valley and Dordogne in south-west France, Henry creates a more intense, autumnal menu that pays tribute to the complex, layered cooking she tasted there. The meal starts with an aperitif agenais – rich, rum-soaked prunes covered in chilled champagne. As a starter, she makes crisp puff pastry squares covered in spinach, crumbled blue cheese, and caramelized onions. To follow is a roasted quail, marinated in herbs and brandy and served with aillade – a creamy walnut sauce famous in the region. To go with the quail, Henry recommends making sautéed wild mushrooms with potatoes and the simplest green salad tossed with a hazelnut vinaigrette.
Her moist fig and honey cake made with port and rosemary becomes a perfectly comforting end to the meal. By first poaching the figs in a syrup of port, lemon juice, rosemary and honey, Henry coaxes out the richest flavors from the fruit before allowing them to caramelize as they bake on top of the cake.
Although not all of us can indulge in holidays in the French countryside, these meals can take us there.
Henry’s Spanish menu is intense and rich – just like the country itself.
Henry’s first visit to Spain was a sensory overload; smells of leather and garlic, loud conversations, and crowded bars. She’d read the bittersweet descriptions of the country written by Lorca and seen the dark, somber portraits by El Greco, and being there felt just as moodily high-pitched as their art suggests.
Spain has fascinated and intrigued her ever since. The fraught political history under Franco reminds her of the Troubles she grew up in in Northern Ireland. She marvels at the capacity that people seem to have for embracing darkness and melancholy but also for living life so fully. There’s an electric aliveness in Spain that keeps people up dancing and drinking and talking and singing all night!
The key message here is: Henry’s Spanish menu is intense and rich – just like the country itself.
How do you express such a sensual intensity in just one meal? Henry decided to create a menu that centred around the most intense dish she’d ever tasted: arroz negro. Arroz negro is a rich risotto made in Catalonia that is colored jet black with squid or cuttlefish ink. It tastes of what Henry describes as “darkness and the sea.” To go with it, she created a romesco sauce made of tomatoes, red peppers, and garlic blistered on the grill and then mixed in a food processor with ground almonds and hazelnuts. The sauce is sharp and vibrant, given depth by the nuts and the rich charred flavor of the peppers. The plate of food is also visually arresting: a gash of red sauce in a sea of black.
To accompany the rice, Henry serves a salad of fennel basted in a sauce of orange zest and sherry. As it cooks, the fennel becomes gold and caramelized. It’s served with goat cheese, hazelnuts, and olive oil.
And for dessert, she makes the richest possible ice cream out of the dark chocolate and Pedro Ximenez sherry. It’s so decadent that it can only be eaten slowly, spoon by spoon. The very best way to end a meal designed to capture the intense pleasures of Spain.
Spicy food and lots of mezcal can be good for heartbreak.
When her plane touched down in Mexico in the middle of the night, Henry felt exhilarated. The trip had been planned as a distraction from a broken heart; she’d just been dumped by her boyfriend. When she walked into her hotel at one in the morning to find a band playing La Bamba in a raucous bar serving shots of mezcal, she knew it would do the trick.
Mexico entranced her with its bright colors, and its vivid flavors. Mexican food turned out to be about so much more than the guacamole with tacos served in Europe. It was delicate, rich, and complex. Today, when she wants a jolt of the exuberant heat that helped to heal her heart, Henry prepares a menu of the dishes she loved so much while she was there.
The key message here is: Spicy food and lots of mezcal can be good for heartbreak.
She starts with a ceviche which is made with the freshest white fish – like sea bass or mackerel – sliced thinly and pickled on the plate in lime juice. The fish is layered with avocado slices, pomegranate seeds, chillis and cilantro as a delicate starter. To follow, she prepares a tinga poblana – a rich, slow-cooked stew made with pork – which is made with chillies and scorched tomatoes which add a caramelized note. It’s served with ripe avocados, sour cream, and crumbled goat cheese. On the side, she serves arroz verde – or green rice – and a roast pumpkin and cauliflower dish with black beans and yet more chilis.
She brings together the zesty flavors of the meal with a simple dessert of “mango cheeks” – the plump round sides of a mango. The mangos are served in a bowl, adorned with the fiery lime-ginger syrup.
When Henry is searching for even more heat to lift the spirits, she turns to Asian cuisine. Southeast Asian food expertly combines hot, sour, salty and sweet flavors together. To celebrate this addictive combination, Henry created a pan-Asian smorgasbord of dishes. To start, she makes the Thai snack food “galloping horses” – sweet and salty chicken-shrimp paste served on pineapple slices. It’s followed by a spicy stir-fry of shrimps with basil and lime accompanied by a Korean pickled cucumber salad and braised pork cooked over three hours with a sticky glaze of the Indonesian sauce kecap manis with ginger, chillies and star anise. To finish, she serves a fragrant sago pudding cooked with coconut milk and pandan leaves.
These meals are guaranteed to make you feel alive, no matter how gloomy the weather or the state of your heart.
Food can provide comfort, and remind us of home.
Food is about adventure, but it’s also about comfort. And there’s nothing more comforting than home. For Henry, the most nostalgic food will always be the kind of fare she ate when she was growing up in Northern Ireland. Things like Guinness bread, made with molasses and buttermilk, or seafood–like smoked eel, cockles, or mussels. The food makes her think of her father, and childhood holidays, and the exuberance of the place where she was born.
The key message here is: Food can provide comfort, and remind us of home.
The strong sensual associations we have with food explain why immigrants to new countries are so set on bringing their culinary traditions with them; it’s a way of tasting home. To go out to eat in a city like New York is to sample the “edible history” of its inhabitants from China, Italy, Germany, West India and Eastern Europe– the food made by immigrants and refugees who tried to create a new home by making the meals they loved best.
Sometimes, a craving for the comfort of home is much more literal: we just want to stay inside and hibernate. Or just have a few loved ones over to share a cosy meal. Of course, that urge becomes much more intense as the winter months roll around bringing cold, rainy days.
While many of Henry’s menus are designed to evoke the festive and exotic, she also knows how to cater to comfort. For example, her menu “I Can Never Resist Pumpkins” is a collection of all the most delicious, warming foods.
To start off with, she suggests serving vegetables like roasted Jerusalem artichokes and broccolini alongside a hazelnut and roast pepper relish. To follow, there’s a warming pumpkin soup, made with a rich chicken stock and served with sage butter and freshly-baked Tuscan grape bread. Fresh bread not only tastes delicious, the warmth of the oven and smell of it baking creates a cosy cocoon on gray days when the rain is pounding down outside.
Then, to finish off the meal, Henry makes a decadent Turinese hot chocolate, prepared with dark chocolate, espresso, milk, and full cream. And she recommends adding some grappa or brandy for even more of a kick.
After a meal like that there’s nothing for it but to curl up in front of the fire with a good book, or indulge in a sleepy afternoon siesta.
You can plan your own menu inspired by Henry’s approach.
By now you’ve probably become very inspired by Henry’s festive menus. But what about if you want to plan your own meal from scratch? Planning the perfect menu is easy, if you just follow some of Henry’s key principles.
The first question you can ask yourself is, what are you trying to say with the meal? Henry has said that her meals are like stories – they express something, be it a festive occasion, a memory of a place, or an ode to a particular season. What is it that you would like your guests to experience through your food?
The key message here is: You can plan your own menu inspired by Henry’s approach.
Then, think about the season and setting for the meal. Are you serving lunch next to the fire, or a summer dinner amidst the trees? The seasonal setting won’t only influence the kind of produce available, it will also affect what kind of food you feel like.
Once you’ve got those factors clearly in mind, you can start thinking about the ingredients you’d like to work with. Do you have a love of beetroots, and feel like building a meal around their sweet, earthy flavors? Are mussels in season? Once you’ve decided on some key ingredients, or even a favorite dish, it will be easy to build the meal around that. As we’ve seen, Henry often begins with a favorite starter or even dessert, and works forwards (or backwards) from there.
When composing your menu, keep Henry’s principles of balance and harmony in mind. Think about how to combine colors, textures, and the temperatures, making sure to mix up soft bakes with crunchy salads and hot mains with cooler sides. Variety makes meals feel more balanced, and the individual elements become more distinct.
Of course, if you’re serving several courses, you should also think about how filling your dishes are. It would be a big pity if your guests are stuffed after their first course, and can’t enjoy the dishes to follow.
And, last, but definitely not least, make sure that whatever you serve is of the best possible quality. A good piece of bread can make a meal – a mediocre one can break it.
Try out Henry’s iconic menu.
Want to try out the menu that inspired the title of Henry’s book — and her entire cooking philosophy?
We’ve included some instructions here so you can make your own version of “How to Eat a Peach”.
This menu was especially designed for those balmy summer nights when you’re sitting in the garden with a group of friends, enjoying a long leisurely meal.
To set the tone, Henry serves a fruity cocktail called a Summer Sandal. To make it, you need to combine half a cup of sugar with a pound of raspberries and the juice of one lemon. Place these ingredients in a blender and combine. Then strain the mixture through a mesh strainer to remove the seeds. Add three quarters of a cup freshly squeezed orange juice. Divide the mixture between six glasses, and then add one tablespoon of Cointreau and another of vodka to each glass. Top up with very cold sparkling wine just before you serve!
To follow, she serves two starters. The first is toasted sourdough bread topped with a fava bean, mint and lemon mash. To make it, cook 2 and a half cups of fava beans in boiling water until tender. Rinse in cold water, and then slip off the skins. The beans are then blended with a garlic clove, lemon juice, white balsamic vinegar, mint and olive oil. Season to taste salt and pepper. Then toast six slices of sourdough bread in the oven until golden brown. Rub garlic and olive oil over each slice, and top with a generous scoop of the fava bean mix. You can add a few chunks of ‘nduja – a spicy spreadable chorizo.
The second starter is a simple salad made with a juicy wedge of cantaloupe melon with creamy goat cheese and a lavender – red wine dressing. To make the dressing, heat a cup of red wine with three tablespoons of honey and a tablespoon of white or red wine vinegar. Once the honey has melted, pour the mixture into a heatproof jug with 2 lavender sprigs. Season with salt flakes and black pepper.
Arrange slices of the melon on plates with chunks of the goat cheese, and then spoon the dressing over.
As a main course, Henry serves a whole baked sea bass with fennel and aioli. To start, she slices two large fennel bulbs into wedges, and tosses them with lemon juice, toasted fennel seeds, orange zest and olive oil. After seasoning, she roasts the wedges in the oven for twenty minutes in a foil-covered dish. She then stuffs the fish with fresh dill, and lays it atop the roasted fennel, sprinkling with toasted fennel seeds and olive oil. After the dish has been in the oven for around half an hour, she sprinkles a third of a cup of fresh orange juice and some more fresh dill over the fennel. Bake for a further five minutes and then take out of the oven.
While the fish is in the oven, you can make the fresh aioli by crushing two garlic cloves with salt. Combine the garlic with two egg yolks and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Then add a cup of olive oil drop by drop while mixing continuously with a wooden spoon or electric mixture. When all the oil has been incorporated, add some finely chopped fennel, fennel fronds, toasted fennel seeds and half a teaspoon of Pernod. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and serve alongside the fish.
As a side, Henry serves tomates provençales aux anchois. To make it, cut eight plum tomatoes in the oven and put them in a single layer in a baking dish. Cover each tomato half with some slices of anchovy and garlic, and drizzle oil from the anchovies over the tomatoes. Then combine a cup of stale bread crumbs with a spoon of lemon zest and 4 sprigs of thyme. Spoon the crumbs on top of the tomatoes and then bake in the oven for around half an hour until the top is crispy.
To bring the summer meal to a sweet end is the famous dessert which inspired the meal: white peaches served whole alongside a bottle of delicious chilled dessert wine like Moscato.
Bon appetit!
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
A good meal is about so much more than just sustenance. It can transport us to different places, provide a sensual link to special people or memories, and provide comfort in dark times. The best dinner parties are meticulously prepared with attention to details. At the same time, they aren’t pretentious or fussy. The main aim of a meal should always be to have fun and enjoy each other’s company.
Actionable advice:
Practice the art of restraint.
When planning a menu it can be very tempting to cram in just one more interesting dish. But not only can that throw off your planning by keeping you too busy in the kitchen, it can actually take away from the deliciousness of the meal. The best menus are careful compositions of select dishes. Squeezing in an extra flavor can throw off the whole balance of the meal.
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What to read next: The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Alice B. Toklas.
If you’ve been enthralled by Diana Henry’s stories of travelling around the world foraging for good food, then we highly recommend you read our blinks to the Alice B. Toklas cookbook.
Like Henry, Toklas was an inveterate explorer with a nose for a good meal. Living in Paris between the wars, she kept company with other interesting expats like Picasso, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. While they wrote and painted, she cooked her way through the French classics and pioneered the art of creating the autobiographical cookbook that contemporary food writers like Henry do so well. In these blinks, you can read about Toklas’s fascinating exploits in Paris, and get some tips for making some delicious dishes while you’re at it. If you’re ready to delve into the mind of another fascinating food writer, then the blinks to The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook are for you.
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