Postre de músico or musician's dessert

The Autumn has arrived, my favorite season, and it feels like eating those foods that used to be seasonal, like nuts, which started to be available around this time of the year after the harvest. All fruits and nuts were seasonal not so long ago and we always related them to a certain time of the year. Now we can find almost anything at any time of the year and to tell the truth... a lot of the charm is gone. And I won´t talk about the luxury in bringing food from the Southern hemisphere to the Northern so that you can pamper yourself with oranges in Summer, for example. Nor of how fruit kept in industrial freezers have their season artificially prolonged, so that what we eat is not at its best regarding ripeness and flavor nor of course has the optimal nutrient content. These matters could fill one hundred posts (sigh).



I believe I first tried this dessert in Andorra a long time ago. D. and I love nuts, we eat a lot of them at home. So a selection of our favorite nuts and dried fruits is a very good option for dessert, especially if you combine them with a glass of moscatel... That's exactly postre de músico (músic in Catalan), which means musician's dessert literally, a very traditional dessert in Catalonia. I've hardly found any information about it in the net, but it seems the name comes from the times when traveling musicians used to play in village celebrations and they were invited to eat whatever nuts and dried fruits people had in their homes.


Postre de músico

One handful of each of the following nuts and dried fruits (much better if they're organic):

• Hazelnuts
• Pine kernels
• Almonds
• Walnuts
• Dried apricots
  
• Dried grapes
  
• Dried figs
  
• Dried plums
  

Of course you can vary the ingredients according to your preference or what you have at hand. Put the fruits handfuls on a beautiful large dish, without mixing them, along with the moscatel glasses or a bottle for serving. It couldn't be easier. I used some delicious almonds from my neighbor. A couple of huge branches of his almond-tree overlook my garden. The crop has been enormous this year, the largest in the 9 years we've been living here. It's so frustrating that we are forced to eat such a large amount of scrumptious, hyper-organic and super-natural almonds... We frugal people.


If you have a real sweet tooth you can eat the dessert on waffles, adding honey, maple syrup, custard... you name it. Although there's no need for much garnish if the food is of good quality. And if you have the chance to eat postre de músico on a Sunday afternoon, on a veranda under the already not so warm sun, smelling the Autumn... You should try it.