What to do with the last apricots of the season: jam, coulis, baked, purée

Published by Friday, August 9, 2013 Permalink 0

Jonell Galloway, Spontaneous Cuisine, Mindful Eating, Slow Food, Editor of The Rambling EpicureWhat to do with the last apricots of the season: jam, coulis, baked, purée

by Jonell Galloway

From the archives

How to Choose Apricots

apricots_valais_tree_switzerland_suisse_geneva

Photo courtesy of Ellen Wallace.

 

The first and most important thing is to buy tree-ripened apricots. By definition, this means local ones, since ripe apricots are soft to the touch and do not travel well.

If you plan to eat them fresh, they should be soft, but not blemished or bruised. The riper they are, the more flavorful they are.

If you are using them for cooking, the riper the better, and you can even get by with blemishes as long as they are not rotten-looking. As a general rule, the softer the sweeter.

You will often see crates of extra-ripe apricots discounted in farmers markets. Look them over, and if there are not too many black or rotting ones, they are actually the best for cooking purposes, especially for jams, cakes and sauces.

Recipe Ideas for Apricots

Note: With all apricot recipes, the amount of sugar used depends on the acidity of the apricots. The acidity depends on the ripeness, origin and variety. With so many factors coming into play, taste tests are indispensable and the quantity of sugar should be determined by taste, using the quantities given here as a guideline.

Apricot Jam Recipe

The basic formula is 900 grams/2 lbs of sugar for every 2 kilograms/4 1/2 lbs of fruit used. This holds true for apricots, apples, cherries, nectarines and plums. If you like your jam really sweet, you can put equal weights of fruit and sugar.

Use cane sugar for more taste. I often halve the quantity of sugar in dessert recipes, but with jams this can be tricky, since sugar is what makes the jam set. It also serves as a preservative. If your fruit is extra-sweet, you might try cutting the quantity of sugar a tad.

apricot_raspberry_jam_valais-switzerland_suisse_recipe_geneva
Photo courtesy of Ellen Wallace.

 

Wash and rub apricots until perfectly clean. Remove any rotten spots with a paring knife. Dry well. Cut in half and remove stones. Save about half of the stones for later use.

Place apricots in a copper confiturier or a large stock pot. Add sugar. Let it sit overnight.

If the apricots are not ripe enough, they will not render any natural juices. If there are no juices, add 500 ml/1 pint of water to the pan.

Slowly bring to a boil on low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. This can take anywhere from 1 hour to 2 1/2 hours, depending on the water content of the apricots and the type of pan and stove or cooker you are using. Scrape the sides of the pan from time to time so that the mixture doesn’t crystallize.

The jam is set when you can dip a wooden spoon in it and it completely coats the spoon. Let jam settle for about 15 minutes before putting it into jars.

Pour jam into sterilized glass jars. Leave to cool. If you see the jam hasn’t set properly, you can put it back into the pan and boil it again, adding a little lemon juice.

Add two stones to each jar. Cool. Seal jars.

Apricot Purée or Coulis

Once again, the amount of sugar you use depends on whether you want it to have a tart flavor or a sweet flavor. If you’re going to pour it onto a very sweet cake or pie, opt for a more acidic taste. If you’re eating with something that is itself a little acidic, you might want to make your sauce sweeter. And once again, the sweetness will always depend on the ripeness of your apricots, so you’ll have to do a taste test in any case.

Wash apricots. Remove stones.

Put 300 grams/10 ounces of cane sugar (labeled sucre de canne roux or cassonade in Swiss and French supermarkets) and a vanilla bean (cut open in the lengthwise direction) into a saucepan. Slowly bring to a boil over medium heat until it begins to thicken and sugar has completely dissolved, i.e. until it forms a syrup.

Put 500 grams/18 ounces of apricots into a food processor, or run them through a food mill or chinois. Add apricots to the liquid sugar mixture and mix with a wooden spoon. Heat mixture until it is thick enough to completely coat a wooden spoon.

This apricot sauce can be eaten warm or cold, depending on what you are using it with. It keeps for several days in the refrigerator.

Apricot coulis is a perfect accompaniment to a dark chocolate cake, but can be used to make ice cream sundaes or parfaits just as easily.

It can also be used in savory dishes, for example with cold chicken breasts or cold pork roast. In this case, you would of course considerably reduce the amount of sugar.

Roasted Apricots

Preheat oven to 250° C or French mark 8. Wash apricots. Cut in half. Remove stone.

Lay apricot halves out on a roasting tin or broiler pan, or in a large casserole dish. Sprinkle lightly with brown cane sugar and just a tad of butter, distributed evenly in small bits, so that it will form a natural sauce.  (This can also be done on a barbecue grill, but you’d lose the juices.) Put in oven, and immediately turn temperature down to 220° C or French mark 7. Turn when top side is browned. If butter starts to burn, add a few drops of water.

When soft and slightly browned and caramelized, remove from oven or grill.

Distribute on individual plates. Serve with a scoop of salt caramel, coffee or walnut ice cream. Lightly sprinkle with vanilla powder (labeled poudre vanille or vanille en poudre in supermarket; easy to find in France, but difficult to find in Switzerland), cinnamon and a high-quality chocolate or cocoa powder. Drizzle a little maple syrup over it. It is now ready to serve.

Sugar-free Apricot Purée or Coulis

The great French chef Michel Guérard, who started the Cuisine Minceur movement in 1974, has a recipe for a sugar-free version of a coulis. This is adapted from the 1976 edition of Michel Guérard’s Cuisine Minceur, now out of print:

Wash, halve and pit 12 ripe fresh apricots. In a saucepan, add apricots, 1/2 cup of water, 1 vanilla bean (cut open in the lengthwise direction, down the middle) and artificial sweetener to taste, the equivalent of about 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Simmer for 10 or 15 minutes, until mixture is reduced by about one third.

Remove vanilla bean. Put mixture in a food processor to make a purée.

This sugar-free sauce can be served in the same manner as the traditional apricot purée or coulis recipe above.

 

Related articles

This article was originally published on GenevaLunch.

Never miss a post
Name: 
Your email address:*
Please enter all required fields
Correct invalid entries

Salone del Gusto versus Good, Clean, and Fair: Part 2

Published by Monday, November 26, 2012 Permalink 0

by Diana Zahuranec

In Salone del Gusto versus Good, Clean, and Fair: Part 1, I’ve already mentioned some healthy skepticism about the presence of two big Italian names at Salone del Gusto: Lavazza Italian coffee, and the supermarket Coop.

Lavazza takes on the responsibility of Fair Trade coffee, but wearing a label doesn’t necessarily prove honest actions behind it. There are loopholes to be jumped in any policy. Without venturing beyond the comfort of online research to the plantations in South America, however, I couldn’t say with utter certainty how good, clean, and fair they are. My main conclusions? Don’t check off the Good Deed Done for the Day box just by buying Fair Trade, without knowing all the facts behind it.

It just doesn’t look Slow Food-y

As for Coop, I was very surprised to see this popular Italian supermarket in a haven of small-time producers at the Salone. Coop is no WalMart nor, on this side of the Atlantic, EuroSpin; shopping in my local Coop store, I’ve noticed very high quality, Alpine mountain cheeses, for example, alongside the added-preservatives-colors-skim-milk-binder, generic salumi; and I suppose I notice more organic produce overall. As far as the realm of supermarkets is concerned, my limited observations earn Coop a dull gold star. But a place at Salone del Gusto? Hardly, I thought.

Asking fellow Slow Food members what they thought, a Swiss friend informed me that it was in large part thanks to Coop, a charter member of Slow Food, that Slow Food Switzerland was initiated and is running strong today. Polish that gold star!

In fact, Slow Food and Coop have a partnership, with Coop supporting and promoting Slow Food values through selling local products as well as over 100 Presidia products (a Presidia labeled food being the equivalent of a protected or endangered animal in the food world).

Coop’s powerful, positive presence in the world of local producers and Presidia was brought home when I sat in for a tasting of some products during Salone del Gusto. Not that I wanted to taste anything. By the end of one of Salone’s last days, I had done as much tasting as my belly and buds could bear. But my legs were tired, and Coop had set up a booth lined with dangling Prosciutto legs, plastic chairs in rows, and a tasting of jam and juice. I didn’t resist.

The tasting was introduced by a Coop Quality Control employee and a representative of a Bosnian company based in Bratunac called Frutti di Pace, or “Peace Fruits.” Together, they told a story of how the Coop employee traveled to Bosnia for this product, met with the Bosnian woman, and formed an instant friendship that was strengthened, as in all cultures, over an abundant welcoming meal.

The employee found that the hardworking spirit and community of the women of Frutti di Pace were as charming as the incredible, all-natural flavors of their products were delicious.

Frutti di Pace was established after the Bosnia and Herzegovina War in 1992-1995. The members of this cooperative, mostly widowed women or women with husbands injured from the war, wanted to spur growth: of the local economy, of a long-held tradition ground to a halt from the war (raspberry production), and of a sense of community and confidence.

The first product we tasted was a thick raspberry juice. No colors, sugars, or conservatives were added – just water and red raspberry. It was exactly like plucking a handful of raspberries from a bush, squishing them all into your mouth, and squeezing out the juices with your tongue. The jams were next, and equally impressive in their bright, strong raspberry flavors. It lacked seeds, but that’s a personal preference of mine for raspberry jams.

Frutti di Pace spent ten years trying to get into the European market. The speaker was overwhelmed almost to tears when she recalled how happy they had been when Coop began selling their products. “’To hope’ is still difficult after everything we’ve been through,” she said.

My knee-jerk reaction to “supermarket” is “too much fluorescent light!” and then, “against all things Slow Food.” But this is not true (well, the second one). Today’s food market is pulled in two directions: one towards a global system made of imports, exports, and oil, the other towards local, small production, trends, and being organic. It’s important to consider the possibility that, between these two polar opposites, not everything is black and white. The grey areas will be necessary to marry two things that won’t go away for better or for worse: supermarkets in many parts of the world, and the importance of strong, local economies and good, clean, and fair food in all parts of the world.

Selling local food (or organic, or from a small producer, etc.) through a medium that everyone uses and will continue to use as long as it exists is ethically responsible and also quite genius.

The question remains: Does Coop Italia earn the good, clean, and fair award? It is still a supermarket that sells items ranging from low to high quality, from all parts of the world, and at prices too low to actually be profitable for the producer. But the answer is nevertheless yes – just, in a rather grey way.

Never miss a post
Name: 
Your email address:*
Please enter all required fields
Correct invalid entries

UA-21892701-1