One of the pleasures of this job is eating -- and then getting to ask for the recipes that are particularly memorable, divine or just so good you'd like to see if you might be able to duplicate it.

This is the case with a dessert we recently had at Julia's Kitchen at Copia, where Nicole Plue reigns over the realm of sweets. It was a Peach Parfait: a creation of peach soup, peach granite and fresh peaches atop a creamy panna cotta, flavored with cinnamon and orange zest, which Plue describes as a "Catalan cream." She serves it with warm churros, the Mexican sweet that's rolled in cinnamon sugar. It sent our long-time food writer Pierce Carson off into transports. "You have to try it," he said. I did. We decided there was nothing to do but get Plue to explain how she did it. It requires several steps, but trust us, it's worth it. With peaches in luscious form at the farmers market, this is one last taste of summer before fall sets in.

It's only one of the imaginative sweets that Plue devises to finish meals at Julia's Kitchen. A transplant from Manhattan, Plue said she got her start baking breads and then creating desserts at Hawthorne Lane in San Francisco before she headed east. Three years ago she joined the Julia's Kitchen staff, and settled into St. Helena.

"It was a shock, but in a good sense," said Plue. "I loved going to small town life and it's so beautiful here."

What are Plue's favorite desserts?

"I like them all," she said. "I usually want to end a meal with something really creamy and if it has vanilla in it, I'm happy," she said. "The single best dessert I ever had was a Catalan cream at Zuni. It was so simple, yet it was one of those little miracles. I got it right when it was meant to be eaten."

Discussing the dessert scene in restaurants, Plue noted that savory desserts -- she calls them "shock and awe" -- continue to be popular. "So is Spanish stuff -- foamy desserts."

But it's still hard to top the gorgeous plated desserts, with several components, the kind Plue creates at Julia's Kitchen. "I know in New York three pastry chefs are opening their own restaurants," she said, explaining that these newest restaurants will be dessert bars serving plated desserts, "kind of like sushi bars."

As soon as peach season is over, she said, she'll be devising desserts for fall's bounty, "figs, huckleberries and apples."