Beautiful Summer Bounty

These past two weekends, we have been just outside Geneva, Switzerland to meet a baby, and in the Berkshires to celebrate the wedding of a close friend, whose mother happens to run a small grass-based dairy in Williamstown. Needless to say, we have been sumptuously well-fed, and I had to share.

In Geneva, the most popular coffee drink is the café renversé (I think they have something similar in Israel called the cafe hafuch). It is basically a latte, except the espresso is put into the hot steamed milk instead of the other way around - hence, "reversed coffee," or, in the Hebrew, "upside down coffee". It is hard to be a big coffee drinker here in the U.S. where you don't find much good stuff, but I could have a café renversé every day if I lived in Geneva.

Just outside Geneva, where we were staying with our friends, we were picking fruit from the orchard...

...spreading homemade preserves on fresh French bread...

...and having tarte aux abricots speckled with lavender from the garden.

In Williamstown, the cheese made on the premises was the focal point during the cocktail hour after the wedding ceremony. Served alongside sun-warmed green figs, with a mildly acidic, palate-cleansing white wine, Maggie's Round (named after the family's dog, who's developed a taste for it) is the kind of cheese you can keep nibbling throughout a summer evening and never feel the need for anything else or a proper meal. It's an Italian farm-style raw milk cheese, aged 2-4 months, with a flavor similar to Italian Toma.