Hellscream's Kitchen: Sliced peaches

Once upon a time, WoW Insider ran a food column wherein we made real-life recipes to correspond with WoW's in-game recipes. Since everything old is new again, and I really like to cook, we're bringing it back! I'm going to do my best to mirror the progression of the recipes actually in-game, so we're starting with one that only requires a cooking skill of one: sliced peaches.

Okay, so it's not that simple. If you want to truly do only sliced peaches, well... slice a peach. I'm jazzing it up a bit in order to turn those peaches into a lovely summery fruit salad. The trick comes from my husband, who is a very talented cook. I once spoke to a mutual friend about a dinner party she'd thrown before he and I started dating, to which she'd asked him to bring a fruit salad.

"You'd think he wouldn't be able to outdo any of us with a simple fruit salad, right?" she told me. "Nope. He still makes it better."

I pestered him until he told me his secret: make a syrup to go with it. It really works. So here it is:

Ingredients:
1/4 - 1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2-4 peaches
Blueberries
Cherries

Heat the water in a small saucepan until it simmers. Pour in the sugar and stir until it dissolves. Squeeze in the juice from the lemon and add the vanilla. All ingredients can be adjusted to taste, but be warned: the vanilla is very strong, and you only need a very small amount, so be careful! Once you've incorporated all the syrup ingredients you can turn down the heat and leave the mixture to cool until you need it.

Meanwhile, slice the peaches. The tough pits make it hard to do this like you would an apple, so you can kind of cut around it, like so:

This technique is not very effective for producing long, elegant slices, but it works just fine and prevents you from smashing the peach to bits trying to tear it away from its pit. Once you've sliced them all up to your liking, toss them in a bowl with some cherries and blueberries and pour over the syrup. Stir gently to coat them, peaches are easy to bruise. As you can see from the picture up top, I garnished the whole thing with some mint from my garden.

You can eat this simple fruit salad on its own, or use it as a topping for yogurt and ice cream. The lemon juice and vanilla in the syrup will give it a tangy kick, and help to prevent the fruit from browning as quickly. Now that's some fruit fit for a warchief!