Sunday 21 June 2020

Apricots and What You Do with Them

                           Apricots are the fruit of the month
                                          


I bought  2 kilos on Friday and I'll buy some more next Friday.  There is only one apricot seller and all he has is apricots.  If I can get there early I can get a few kilos for marmelade (jam or jelly) at half price.    

These may look a bit bruised but they are all full of flavour and everyone is juicy and bursting with apricot-ness

First I made some apricot jam.  It didn't set very well but that doesn't bother us.  It will still sit on our toast and can be layered in a tart of topped on icecream.

Then I made, instead of chutney, hot chilli apricot sauce.  I just altered a recipe for hot tomato chilli sauce.

I  boiled  the apricots and added them to a hot sauce.  The sauce had a hot pepper, a little soy sauce, a little sugar and vinegar.  I boiled those ingredients till they thickened a little, tasted and added a little more of that, a little of this, till it tasted perfect.  A quick puree with the stick mixer and Bob's your uncle.

The first jar has already disappeared so I'll definitely make some more.  I have also boiled a pot of apricots till they were mushy and put those in the fridge for eating with thick greek yoghurt.  I haven't added any sugar so they are slightly tart.  I wish I had some weetabix to eat with the mushy apricots.  It reminds of my parents breakfasts back home long ago.  Weetabix in the summer, porridge in the winter with whatever fruit was in season, just lightly cooked with no sugar.  Well, I may be wrong there.  I don't think they'd be eating rhubarb without some sweetening.

I  found a recipe for apricot icecream.  
This is an Israeli recipe, it says

You just boil 1/2 a kilo of apricots until mushy.  That doesn't take long.  Drain off the liquid and keep it on one side.  Puree the apricots. 
Make a syrup with 1/2 cup of sugar and one cup of juices and water combined.  You just have to simmer those for a few moments and leave to cool.

Mix the apricot puree in with the syrup.  Whip up one cup of whipping cream till stiff.  Combine the apricots and the cream carefully  and freeze.

When it is half frozen just give it a bit of a stir.  

I haven't made this yet but I'm going to and I shall take photos of course.  Sounds easy, not too sweet and darnnit, it's icecream, what can go wrong.

Then there is apricot cake, apricot tart

Yeh, for apricots.  I shall put a few containers of pureed fruit in the freezer too, ready for those winter months when we are bored with oranges, mandarines, apples, bananas, pomgranites and want a change.

16 comments:

  1. Apricot jam and jelly are my favorites. You are a busy lady! I hope your ice cream turns out tasty.

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    1. The ice-cream sound healthier than most and with fresh fruit it has got to be good. Tomorrow!!

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  2. Biting into a ripe juicy flavoursome apricot - yum! So many that we buy here are picked too early so we seldom get to enjoy that treat :)

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    1. Some of the apricots I bought were hard but they were left on the bench and I was surprised at how they softened and ripened. But loads of heat and sunshine here!

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  3. Good luck with that ice-cream, it sounds too easy to be true. Apricots were our fav fruit as kids. They were grown in Kurow in those days - close enough to drive up and fill the trailer with 20lb cases. Poor Mum used to bottle 150 2pint jars of them every year! Strangely we never ate them any other way than with cornflakes.

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    1. That's a helluva lot of jam! You must have been a big family. I can't remember eating apricots when we were young but we probably only had one or two trees. Nearly all the fruit we ate was from our own trees and land. My father was an avid gardener.
      I'm buying some cream today to try the ice-cream. It's just whipped cream and fruit so it will be interesting to see what happens.
      Grandkids are used to my experiments. They'll eat whatever

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  4. PS even more strangely, cornflakes were dessert in our house, not breakfast.

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    1. I used to munch on cornflakes yoghurt and fruit here. Can get addictive!

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  5. Love apricots. We grew them when we were in the Far North.

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    1. For some strange reason I thought apricots were grown in the South Island. Maybe they are but the sunny
      north of course would be the obvious place

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  6. My wife always makes enough Apricot Jam for the year. Her morning croissant wouldn't be the same without her homemade Apricot Jam.

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    1. Apricot jam is my favourite. It just seems more flavoursome, even more than strawberry. Apricots also make the best chutney in my opinion

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  7. Where did you find an Israeli recipe? Now I'm really proud. (Most of our recipes are something we stole from other countries).

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    1. Hi Yael. I thought of you immediately!! And not just one recipe but 10.
      It's on a site called On the Grapevine and it has Israeli-kitchen recipes

      https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/israeli-kitchen/recipes/apricot-ice-cream

      This link won't work. But you can see where to go. It has some really good recipes. I am going to try the arpicot cake too and would like to make apricot chicken but I know that my husband won't eat it.

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  8. I just love Apricots, we get the medium sized ones here in the Supermarkets, they are a wee bit expensive but so worth buying.

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  9. Love apricots
    And yes. Ice cream is the best. What can go wrong

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