Poached Pistachio Sprinkled Apricots with Crème Fraiche

It’s a funny  thing,  we love these apricots from How To Eat by Nigella Lawson (1998), but I often forget about them.  (Actually I’m hoping this page may help me remember good things I’ve made.) Possibly it’s a side effect of cooking a lot, you forget about all the good things that have passed through your kitchen, and when you need a dessert or main for an occasion, or even just regular dinner any day of the week, you draw a blank.

Anyhow, I was flicking through How To Eat, and I had a bookmark in the page of the poached pistachio sprinkled apricots with crème fraiche recipe. Having  made them before several times, I could just taste them reading the recipe, could see their beauty on a plate, smell their luscious fragrance. The apricots are poached in a cardamom scented syrup, there is no booze, but it’s so intoxicating. There is a little sugar in the poaching syrup, but the dried apricots themselves are sweet so here I do go with the crème fraiche in the stuffing, as the sourness balances out the sweetness for a flavour sensation.  

 

This is not a quick recipe, you soak the apricots overnight. Make a syrup, poach them in the oven. Let get them become cool, then chill and later stuff with the crème fraiche, drizzle with the syrup and lastly sprinkle with some chopped pistachios.  This is the kind of kitchen pottering I enjoy most. Although I’m not knocking fast cooking, as it is most definitely needed in my daily quest to bring supper to the table… it’s just the kind I enjoy most is the pottering variety where it feels somehow special to invest a little time on something good to eat.