One of the quickest and easiest desserts this time of year comes right off the grill – peaches and nectarines topped with anything and sprinkled with something. That simple.

Peaches and nectarines are actually the same fruit – one has fuzz and the other doesn’t. It’s a recessive vs dominant allele. The two can even grow on the same tree.

That being said, I usually lean towards peaches. Probably a childhood thing. As a kid, my grandparents’ next-door neighbor, Mrs McNamee, had a peach tree that we would steal peaches from whenever we could. And grandma would make the best peach pies…

Mr. Brown, their neighbor on the other side grew watermelons. My brother and I stole his prize seed melon one day – not knowing it was his seed melon – just grabbing the biggest one in his yard to eat in our tree house. Damn, he was pissed. He knew it was us but couldn’t prove it. Really pissed. And it totally sucked. All it was was seeds. We didn’t even get to enjoy the damned thing.

We were pretty good watermelon thieves back in the day. Just a couple of blocks from my grandparents was a huge watermelon field that we would sneak into and grab melons. One summer – I was maybe 5 – the farmer came out with a shotgun. I was the last one over the fence and my legs were peppered with rock salt. I remember sitting in the bathtub crying as my grandmother held me in there to dissolve the salt. It hurt like hell. She was not amused – not that Farmer John had shot us, but that we were doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing and she had to deal with our stupidity. Learning experience. Run faster.

But I digress…

I almost always buy peaches – I like that fuzzy skin, but I was sampling nectarines at work and they were so good I had to bring some home.

I mixed a bit of ricotta with some mascarpone, added a pinch of sugar and a bit of pistachio cream liqueur we made. Vanilla would work.

I cut the nectarines in half and placed them on the grill just long enough to heat through – less than 5 minutes. Ricotta mixture on top and chopped pistachios on top of that.

Instant Summer! And great memories of childhood freedom that kids today will never get to experience.