Apricot

When I go to the farmers’ markets in summer and see all the bounty, I start asking myself, “What can work with what?” and “What would balance that fruit?” Apricots and peppermint are both refreshing flavors. In this dessert, the mint livens the apricot, providing an herbal contrast to the natural sweetness of the fruit.

In the heart of Dijon, at the Municipal Museum, right next door to the majestic stone kitchen of the dukes of Burgundy, Alette Lévy checks coats. Once the owner of Dijon’s only kosher butcher shop, she talks food between customers, such as this chicken-tagine recipe she makes for her French friends. The trick to this recipe is to put the almonds in the microwave for 3 minutes, to make them crackly. This way you don’t run the risk of burning them, the way I always seem to do when I forget them in the oven or frying pan. Alette told me you can substitute lamb for the chicken.

When I ate dinner at the Home of Nathalie Berrebi, a Frenchwoman living in Geneva, she served this savory quick bread warm and sliced thin, as a first course for a dinner attended by lots of children and adults. For the main course, Nathalie prepared rouget (red mullet) with an eggplant tapenade on top, something all the children loved. The entire dinner was delicious, but I especially liked that savory bread with the unexpected flavor combination of goat cheese, apricots, and fresh mint. Now I often make this quick bread for brunch or lunch and serve it with a green salad.

The Parsi community of India is of Persian descent. When the Parsis fled Iran in the tenth century, they settled on India’s west coast, where they managed to preserve not only their religious traditions—they are Zoroastrians—but many of their culinary traditions as well. This delicately sweet-and-sour dish of chicken cooked with dried apricots is part of that tradition. I have a Parsi friend who puts in a healthy glug of Madeira toward the end of the cooking. Parsis picked up many customs not only from their Gujarati neighbors but also from their neighbors and masters in nineteenth-century Bombay, the British. This dish is generally served with a mountain of very fine, crisp potato straws—you can just buy a large packet of them—but may also be served with rice.

The special appeal here is the contrast between the tartness of the apricots and the sweetness of the almond paste.

This delicately fragrant sweet is an old Syrian specialty of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, when it is eaten to break the daily fast. It keeps very well for days, even weeks, covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

Rice pudding is a homely pudding. Topped by a fruit compote such as stewed apricots, it becomes elegant, dinner-party fare. It is also good served with rose petal jam, which you can buy in Middle Eastern stores. Gum mastic (see recipe on page 321) gives the pudding an intriguing, and to me, very delicious flavor, but it is optional. Serve the pudding cold.

Compotes of dried or fresh fruits in syrup are popular desserts. At parties in Turkey, they are the last thing to be served, signaling that there is nothing more to follow. This sharp-tasting compote with fresh apricots is especially delicious. I add pistachios for their color as well as for their taste, and they should be peeled for this dish. To do this most easily, poach them in water for 1 to 2 minutes and drain; when they are cool enough to handle, pull off or squeeze away the skins.

I have used the ingredients of a chicken tagine as a relish to accompany duck (which is not a Moroccan bird) because the combination of fatty duck with sharp apricots is great.

A contemporary stripped-down fruit dessert that is so unbelievably good, with very few ingredients.

This special dessert is so good—and so much fun to prepare and serve—I hope you’ll be persuaded to make and keep scrippelle (crêpes) on hand all the time, as they do in the kitchens of Abruzzo. Here, you slice the scrippelle into strips (they look like fresh fettuccine!) and toss them in a hot caramel, apricot, and citrus sauce that you’ve got bubbling in a skillet. Serve the beautifully glazed ribbons still warm, with whipped cream melting on top. This recipe calls for a full batch of the thin pancakes (the same ones used for the savory Crespelle with Spinach, page 234), but it is easy to adjust the amounts to make a larger or smaller dessert. Even if you have only a couple of extra scrippelle in your freezer, you can still transform them, with this basic technique, into a treat for two. Let your creativity loose: Just like pasta, scrippelle ribbons can be dressed for dessert in countless ways. Add rum or liqueur to this caramel sauce, or vary it with other fruit preserves or juices. Shape the ribbons into a little nest for a scoop of ice cream. Or drizzle melted chocolate over the warm ribbons, sprinkle with chopped toasted hazelnuts, and top with a dollop of whipped cream.

My friend Mario Piccozzi and I discovered this deluxe version of bread pudding on a winter visit to Merano, the historic resort town in the middle of the Alps, in Alto Adige. It was the perfect dessert on a cold day, served in its baking dish, still warm from the oven. Spooning the pudding onto plates, I was thrilled to find it loaded with apple chunks and walnuts, oozing rich custard and bubbling apricot jam. I make this at home now (it’s very easy) and serve it just as they do in Merano, family-style, setting the steaming, gold-topped pudding in the middle of the table, with a serving spoon and lots of plates. It disappears fast.

This Moroccan-style braise is deeply aromatic, meltingly tender, and exactly what you want on a chilly winter weekend.