Jacques Pépin's Peach Melba - a Simple French Dessert | Cooking at Home | KQED

Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin and I'm cooking at home. Well, the most classic dessert we do in French cooking is the Peche Melba, the Peach Melba. This was invented by Escoffier, a great chef of the 19th century, in the honor of the soprano, the singer from Australia, I believe, Melba. So he did the Peach Melba, like the toast Melba as well. She liked her toast extremely thin. So conventionally, or very often, it is done with cooked pear. You cook the pear, of course, in a syrup and so forth. Here I have fresh peach, and the fresh peach, especially the white peach, those are white peach, and that's what I'm going to use here and show you very simply how to do it. So half a peach per person, and the peach sometimes are free. Here is my half peach here, which is beautiful white peach, just ripe. So what I will do here is a piece of pancake and then ice cream, vanilla ice cream. When I get ice cream, I get a package of ice cream. I often cut it into six, seven piece and roll it individually in plastic wrap like this. So when I need an ice cream, I just grab it out of the freezer this way and it's that much fresher. So here I have my ice cream on top. I have my two bowl of beautiful peach here, which are going to be on top. And of course, this is with raspberry preserve on top. That's the classic recipe with a few almonds, maybe a little spring of mint for decoration. This is the Pêche Melba in the memory of the great singer. Happy cooking.