It’s apricot time again. I’ve been buying expensive Spanish ones to eat straight away and supermarket apricots you’re supposed to ‘ripen at home’.
I don’t ripen them at home, though. I bake them – as I do every year – in a chipped cast-iron dish with white wine and vanilla, and sugar dusted on top. In blue-skied summers you’re tasting holidays when you eat these; in rainy summers – there was a depressingly rainy one a few years ago – you hold on to them as a sign of something better.
I pile those hard supermarket apricots in bowls for the kitchen table because they look beautiful, no matter what their flesh is like. I eat the baked ones for breakfast with yogurt, or sneak a spoonful from the fridge when I fancy it.
Beyond that I could make apricot dishes every day: tarts, both simple and elaborate, upside-down cakes, ice cream, poached apricots to serve with chai-flavoured creams, jellies in which halves are suspended in muscat wine. And we’re not even on to preserves yet.
Apricots are, hands down, my favourite summer fruit (though tart Scottish raspberries run a close second). I like the weight of them in my hand, a perfect round that you can conceal if you want to (I don’t want to share ripe apricots with anyone).
They’re less celebrated than other stone fruits. It was peaches that Renoir painted obsessively – peaches with almonds, on linen, in a white bowl. In fact he thought every artist should paint peaches because it was good practice for conveying the tones and softness of skin.
Because of their size I feel apricots make fewer demands than peaches; they’re not hungry for attention. But look at that blush skin. It burns red in some parts, and is often dotted with tiny freckles. I tend to go for the reddest ones though I know, from experience, that it doesn’t make a difference to the flavour. You usually can’t tell what you’re getting into when you bite an apricot.
In this country, we rarely get to taste them as they should be tasted – ripe, warm and straight off the tree – though if you’re willing to spend the money, you can buy the best available here (some years the most intensely flavoured come from France, sometimes from Spain).
Most of the run-of-the-mill sort are blighted by a woolly texture and insipid flavour. But they hide a secret. The blandest, most ordinary apricots are transformed by heat.
When I bake them, I think, looking at a particularly unpromising load, that it’s not going to work this time. It always does. The application of heat brings out flavours even the sun can’t. The flesh becomes intensely honeyed with a shot of tartness.
Baked apricots can be almost difficult to eat at times as they hold this sweet-tart balance as if teasing you. Will the next bite make me shudder? With an apricot and almond tart I’m always chasing the pastry or the frangipane, an antidote to the fruit’s intensity.
I chase apricots that aren’t even in the fruit bowl. Wines made from the viognier grape are most often described as having apricot tones. Some scorn this – they think the grape produces wines that are blousy – but I love them. They’re big and fat and honeyed and have a whiff of violets.
You can sometimes detect apricots in a riesling too, and – a heady pleasure – in Sauternes and Hungarian Tokay. The latter is like drinking the very essence of apricots.
Austrian apricot slices
I’ve been making this recipe – I got it from Café Sperl in Vienna – with plums for years. This summer I tried it with apricots. It’s so good that my children had to take it away and distribute it among their friends.
I’m telling you, these are delicious, and you don’t even have to roll out any pastry.
Timings
Prep time: 25 minutes, plus chilling time
Cook time: 1 hour, plus cooling time
Makes
15-20
Ingredients
- 215g cold butter, cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing
- 225g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 175g ground almonds
- 125g caster sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tbsp chilled water (if necessary)
- 900g apricots
- 3 tbsp granulated sugar
- 175g apricot jam
Method
- Butter a 20 x 30cm baking tray and line it with parchment, letting the paper hang over the sides so you can use it to lift the slices out later. Butter the baking parchment.
- Put the butter, flour and almonds into a food processor and, using the pulse button, blend until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the caster sugar, a pinch of salt, the egg yolk and the vanilla, and blend, again using the pulse button. You may need to add half a tablespoon of chilled water to help it bind. Once the mixture looks almost like pastry – but before it comes together completely – empty it on to a lightly floured work surface. Pull together, lightly knead, then press it into the baking tray using your hands. Spread it out, working into the corners and trying to keep the pastry the same thickness all over. Put this in the coldest bit of the fridge and let it chill for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 180C/170C fan/gas mark 4.
- Halve and stone the apricots and cut them into 1cm-thick slices.
- Put the chilled pastry in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until pale gold. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
- Arrange the apricot slices in rows, slightly overlapping, until you have covered the pastry. Sprinkle on the granulated sugar. Put back in the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes. The fruit should be cooked and slightly scorched in places. Take out of the oven and leave to cool completely. Lift out of the baking tin.
- Put the apricot jam in a small saucepan with two tablespoons of water. Heat this, breaking down the jam with the back of a wooden spoon until it is smooth. Push this through a sieve so you can remove the chunky bits. Leave to cool, but not for so long that the jam sets. Using a pastry brush, glaze the apricots thickly. Leave so the fruit can settle. When it seems ‘set’, cut into slices or squares.
Mahalabia with orange blossom water and roast-apricot purée
This is a Middle Eastern milk pudding, made across the region in different countries (it has slightly different names depending on where it’s made).
It sounds as if it might be bland – just milk, sugar and cornflour – but as soon as I tasted it I knew I had to have it with apricots. The fruit is intense, the milk pudding is mild; it’s the orange flower water that pulls them both together.
Timings
Prep time: 30 minutes, plus infusing and cooling time, and overnight chilling
Cook time: 55 minutes
Serves
Eight
Ingredients
- 70g cornflour
- 1 litre full-fat milk
- 125g caster sugar
- 4 broad strips of orange zest and 3 of lemon zest
- 70g natural Greek yogurt
- 5 tsp orange blossom water, or to taste
- Chopped pistachios, to serve
For the apricot purée
- 600g apricots, halved and stoned
- 75ml white wine or water
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 100g caster sugar
- 2 tbsp orange blossom honey, or add more or less if you need to
- Lemon juice, to taste
Method
- Mix the cornflour with enough of the milk to produce a smooth paste. Add it gradually, stirring all the time. Heat the rest of the milk with the sugar and the strips of orange and lemon zest. Slowly bring to the boil, stirring to help the sugar dissolve. Take off the heat and leave for an hour, so the citrus can infuse the milk.
- Strain – discard the orange and lemon – and put the milk back in the saucepan. Add the cornflour mixture to the milk, stirring it in well. Bring to a boil, stirring all the time. The mixture will become thicker. Turn the heat down and cook for four minutes, to cook the cornflour (otherwise you will get a raw flour taste). Pour into a bowl and set the bowl in iced water to help the mahalabia cool.
- When it’s cool, add the yogurt and orange blossom water. Add the orange blossom water a little at a time as they vary in strength. You don’t want the flavour to be too strong.
- Spoon the mahalabia into eight glasses, leaving room at the top for the apricot purée. Put the glasses into the fridge overnight for it to firm up a bit. Keep them in the fridge until you want to add the apricot purée.
- Heat the oven to 190C/180C fan/gas mark 5. Put the apricots in a gratin dish or small roasting tin where they can lie in a single layer. Add the wine or water, mixed with the vanilla. Sprinkle on the sugar. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the apricots are completely soft and scorched in places. Leave to cool.
- Drain off the cooking juices – keep them – then purée the apricots, adding as much of the cooking juices as you need. Don’t make the mixture too thin. Taste and add honey and lemon juice to taste, if you need to. You might not need either, it depends on the flavour of your apricots.
- Before serving, carefully spoon the purée on top of the cold mahalabia and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.
Apricot liqueur
I make this every summer. You have to leave it – ideally – for a month before drinking it so hurry and do it. You can drink it neat and cold or use it to make an apricot kir.
Timings
Prep time: 15 minutes, plus 1 week steeping
Cook time: 10 minutes
Makes
2 x 700ml bottles
Ingredients
- 450g granulated sugar
- 1 x 75cl bottle dry white wine
- 500g apricots, halved and stoned
- 500ml vodka
Method
- Put the sugar and the wine in a saucepan – one that will hold the apricots too – and bring to just under the boil, stirring every so often to help the sugar dissolve. Add the apricots and, on a gentle simmer, cook until they are tender. Add the vodka.
- Put this in a container with a tight-fitting lid – I use a Tupperware box; you can also use a jar – leave to cool, then cover and set aside somewhere cool for a week. Strain through a muslin-lined sieve into a jug. Pour into sterilised bottles and seal. Leave for a month before drinking.
- You will find that some little bits gather at the bottom of the bottle. I usually filter the drink again, through muslin. This ‘sediment’ doesn’t spoil the drink, it just doesn’t look perfect.
