All Things Apricot

Zorba came upon an old man planting an apricot seedling and asked why he, an old man, was planting a new tree. "I live as though I would never die," was his reply. "And me, I live as though I might die tomorrow," said Zorba, "which one of us is right?"
    - Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba The Greek

I like to think that I live as both the old man and Zorba  -- especially when it comes to apricots. I plant metaphorical apricot seedlings for the future, and eat as many apricots as I can today, since I don't know what tomorrow may bring.  Right now, in the depths of early winter, I find myself with severe cravings for the golden acid-sweet burst of an apricot.  I've always loved them.  I love the blush-sweet image they conjure in my mind, little orbs so glowingly peachy, but with a tad more perfume, a bit more piquant bite.  I love the words for apricot in other languages:  abricot in French, albaricoque in Spanish, and my favorite of all, Arabic -- mishmish.  Mmmmmm.....mishmish.  I'm sure that I didn't read Collette Rossant's gorgeous memoir with recipes, Apricots on the Nile, merely because of its title...but then again an evocative title is certainly part of what draws us to a book. 

As a child, most of my apricots were eaten dried, since we never seemed to get good fresh ones.  These days, with the happy advent of farmers' markets to our cities and fresh local produce at our fingertips, I revel in apricot season.  It seemed to run almost through the entire summer this year -- from mid-June through August.  I made a tart, a cake or two and developed a passion as well as a recipe for apricot curd.  Mostly, though, when they're fresh and seasonal, I eat them as they are -- hopefully with perfumy juices dripping down my face -- but even when they're not that juicy, quite happily. 

But it's January, and so I'm back to my old friend the dried apricot.   I toyed with the idea of slow-roasting our New Years' Eve shoulder of pork with apricots -- but knew that G, that inveterate apple fan, would be wishing for spiced sauteed apples with the roast, and I didn't want to disappoint.  Instead our sweet course to ring in the new year was a spin on bread-and-butter pudding that was light, pillowy, creamy as a dream -- but with a lusty apricot tang.  I unearthed the last jar of apricot curd I'd frozen back in August and plumped up some of my favorite French dried apricots from Fairway with a nice splash of Grand Marnier.   Then it struck me -- the golden pandoro I'd bought some weeks ago, taken a taste of and promptly abandoned could be put to good use here.

So the pandoro was sliced, buttered and spread with apricot curd (you could easily use apricot butter or good apricot preserves here too), layered in a buttered dish with snipped apricots plumped in Grand Marnier, and then covered with a custard of eggs, more cream than milk, not too much sugar, and a liberal grating of nutmeg.  I baked it until just set, about 40 minutes, and it was quite perfect -- and even better on New Years' Day.   

But that was not enough to satisfy my midwinter apricot mania.  The same book I mentioned earlier, Apricots on the Nile, had provoked the idea of an apricot flavor insinuating itself into more savory fare -- specifically, Ms. Rossant's description of and recipe for delicate little lamb meatballs in an apricot sauce.  That recipe remains for the moment in my mental to-try file, since I'm just a little iffy about meat-and-fruit combinations.  In the meantime I happened across a recipe for linguine with apricots.  At first glance, I dismissed it.  Pasta in a fruit sauce?  Must be dreadful.  But I went back for another look.  There's practically as much garlic as apricot in the recipe, as well as olive oil, dry white wine, rosemary -- lots of savory counterpoint to the sweet tang of the fruit.  I realized that the reason I don't like most sweet-and-savory combinations is that the sweet too often outweighs the other flavors.  I can't stand my sweet potatoes with sugar or syrup or even sweet spices.  Their natural sweetness needs no heightening -- instead it demands the contrast of salted butter and plenty of pepper, to my palate.  In anything other than outright desserts, a whisper of nutmeg is reserved for savory potato and spinach dishes, hints of cinnamon and allspice for tagines where cumin and garlic balance the sweetness of the other spices.  In this recipe, apricots are the only sweet element, playing against other sharp and savory flavors.  I decided it had possibilities.

So tonight I gave pasta with apricots and garlic a spin.  Magic.  I let the apricots simmer in the garlicky, winey olive-oil broth until they began to melt into the liquid.  Then the sauce was tossed with hot linguine and sprinkled with fresh chopped parsley.  It still needed just a little something, so toasted pine nuts were sprinkled over.  My mind prohibited grated cheese at first, but I knew that when G saw pasta, he would probably want cheese.  Then I thought of fruit's natural affinity for cheese -- and it occurred to me too that these apricots were, in a way, operating as if they were simply slightly sweeter tomatoes in the sauce.  A bit of freshly grated pecorino romano was a delicious if not strictly necessary addition. 

And so I live not just for time to come, nor solely for today -- but to taste apricots and conjure summer while enjoying winter as well.  I hope too that all of you are enjoying your favorite aromas and tastes as you enter a new year that will hopefully bring us all closer to the future, as well as inviting us to live right here, right now.

Apricot Bread-and-Butter Pudding

Serves 6

6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup coarsely chopped moist dried apricots
2 tablespoons Grand Marnier
8-10 small slices pandoro or other golden egg bread, i.e. challah or brioche
1 cup apricot curd or butter or preserves
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1 tsp. good vanilla
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter a shallow baking dish with a capacity of about 1 1/2 quarts.  Put the chopped apricots in a little dish and sprinkle the Grand Marnier over and leave them to macerate.  Make little sandwiches with the pandoro, butter and apricot curd or jam; there may be some butter left over to dot on the top later.  Now cut the sandwiches in half  or even quarters to facilitate fitting them into your dish; arrange them evenly along the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle over the apricots, tucking them into the spaces between the little sandwiches.  Sprinkle over any unabsorbed liquer that remains in the bowl.

Whisk the eggs and egg yolk together with the sugar, and pour in the cream and milk.  Add the vanilla and nutmeg, and mix all together well. Pour this over the bread sandwiches and leave them to soak up the liquid for about 10 minutes, by which time the pudding is ready to go into the oven. Smear the bread that is poking out of the custard with the soft butter.

Place the dish on a baking sheet and put in the oven to cook for  about 40 minutes or until the custard has set and puffed up slightly.  Remove and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Linguine with Apricots (adapted from the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook)

1/2 cup best-quality olive oil
15 - 20 fat cloves of garlic, half minced, half cut into thin slivers
1 generous tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely minced
1 cup dry white wine
3⁄4 cup plump moist dried apricots, cut into slivers
Salt and pepper
1 pound linguine
1⁄2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup snipped fresh chives

Toasted pine nuts
Grated pecorino romano cheese

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.  Add the minced and slivered garlic and sauté until just browned.  Stir in the white wine.  Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.  Add the rosemary and apricots.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer for about 15 minutes, until some of the apricots start to dissolve and the sauce emulsifies.  If the oil stays separate, stir a little hot water in to encourage the emulsion.

Cook the pasta al dente and drain, reserving 1 cup of the pasta's hot cooking water.  Use as much of this as seems necessary to loosen and re-emulsify the apricot-garlic sauce. 

Place the pasta, sauce, parsley and chives in a large serving bowl and toss to coat.  Sprinkle with toasted pine nuts. Pass grated cheese at the table. 

Comments

[Raspberry Sour]

I make apricot-lentil soup several times a year, but to think that an entire book of apricot recipes is in existence and I didn't know about it!? It's probably a good thing that it's too late at night for gallavanting to the bookstore.

[rowena]

Linguine with apricots??!!! Dang it, I should have saved some of those turkish apricots instead of stuffing them all with sweetened mascarpone and pistacchios and then promptly stuffing them into my face. Weak.

Nevertheless Julie, I am saving this one to try later. Happy New Year!

[Julie]

Oh Raspberry -- I didn't mean to imply that Ms. Rossant's book Apricots on the Nile is a book of apricot recipes. It's not. It's a memoir of her childhood in Egypt, with an evocative apricot title, and the recipe that I cited from it happens to be one with apricots. I can see why you would think it's an apricot cookbook...

Hi Rowena -- Happy New Year to you all! I've been keeping up with your lovely blog as always -- it's great to hear from you. I don't know...apricots stuffed with mascarpone and pistachios sound just about right to me...

[Molly]

Julie, these recipes both sound so delicious that I can't tell which one, exactly, is making my mouth water so profusely! Looks like I'll just have to try them both...

[Raspberry Sour]

Alas, it's back to the soup pot for me then. Although that linguine sounds awfully good too.

[Joe Bellacero]

Julie, perhaps I should share this directly with you, but I'm here so...
Chris and I were a couple of 20 year olds in France. In Paris someone had tried to rob us, the people at the hotels were rude to us (When we asked how much a room was we were told if we couldn't afford it we should go home!), a gendarme had threatened me. So we took our Eurail passes and went to Orleans. Depressed, unhappy and feeling unwanted we sat on a street corner deciding what to do. A car slowed as it passed and an elderly worman looked us over. 5 min. later she was back holding two humongous dogs on leashes. She asked us something which we interpreted as, "Do you need a room?" We nodded. She grabbed our backpacks and started off down the street. She stopped at a giant corrugated metal fence, turned an ancient key in an ancient lock and opened the gate to a beautiful garden of flowers and apricot trees, a quonset hut in one corner and a creaky old mansion at the far end of the yard. "Seven children, all gones." she managed in English. "You stay." She threw our luggage into the hut which had a big feather bed and walls papered with teenage drawings from children past.
The next morning we found bananas and some milk on the doorstep. We stayed two nights and would have stayed longer were it not for the outhouse and the racket of the dogs whenever we used it. The morning we left, I picked a bushel of her apricots for her because she would not accept any money. She made us take half of them with us. I had never liked apricots before then, but since, I have found every one I eat to be doubly sweet.

[Julie]

Molly, these recipes are definitely worth playing with -- by the way, I was also inspired to make the bread-and-butter pudding by your description of your mother's mincemeat and marmalade bread pudding...

Raspberry, give the linguine a try -- and lentil soup with apricots certainly sounds intriguing to me...

Joe, thanks so much for sharing this beautiful story with me and with the readers of AFIEP. We should all begin our new year by remembering stories that restore our faith in human nature...

[Molly]

Julie, in that case, you've done my mother proud. Looks like I'll just have to try the bread pudding first, then!

[Cathy]

Both sound so good, but I think the Linguine with Apricots is just my speed right now.

[Julie]

Molly and Cathy -- let me know how the recipes work for you!