Locally Devoted to You

I accept I am supposed to eat locally and seasonally but really, apricots? What do you do with apricots? What The Fruit

The 2 biggest uses for apricots are drying them or preserving them (jam, crystallizing or distilling) - these activities do not speak well for the flavor of the fresh variety. California and as with so much else grown in California, is the US crop – producing 94% of the US harvest, most of it in the San Joachim Valley. The remaining production is located in Washington and Utah with all other states producing a negligible crop that is sold fresh, locally. About 2/3 of the Cali harvest is processed, much of that is dried, and much of that dried fruit is exported, while the US imports dried apricots from Turkey and other countries. Go figure.

The USDA statistics claim we eat about .2 pounds of fresh apricots per person. On average US residents consume 3 times more dried apricots than fresh variety and we eat twice as many canned/frozen apricots as the fresh kind. And that doesn’t take into account things like the 4 pounds of apricots from a friend's tree I will process into about a pound of jam. (That means I am taking the quota for 20ish people, adding sugar to it and freezing the excess, but this still counts as fresh fruit consumption).

All this kind points to the issue that apricots aren’t really the best-tasting, sweetest fruit with a longest storage capacity in the world. And this digs down into the enigma of fresh, local, seasonal ideals: Is fresh a food fetish, a return to a more Edenic time or an anachronism in a fast food world? Suppose that apples were planted in abundance in the US and grown for cider, hard cider and the edible, storable varieties had as much to do with temperance as keeping the doctor away…

Let’s also suppose that despite the best efforts of plant breeders, transportation systems and agricultural marketers, the best use of an apricot remains the same as it has been since antiquity; dried. The act of drying condenses the sweetness of the fruit, concentrates its mineral and vitamin contents (Even canned apricots contain more vitamin C than an apricot that was picked under ripe or stored too long). Plus drying preserves the abundance of the crop - making apricots available year around. Over the centuries breeds and varieties have been selected for their ability to be dried and stored, not picked off the branches and eaten. Maybe fresh apricots, really only available on the west coast and then only to a self-selecting group of fruitophiles willing to pay a premium, really aren’t at their best fresh.

Then again most of the cherry crop is preserved and there are some varieties that taste great fresh off the tree. I have been eating my apricots with yogurt. My apricot grower friend likes them in oat pancakes. On the savory side - roasted apricots with lamb and curry seems to be a standard bearer. Almost universally, apricots are used to make a simple syrup glaze that is brushed on almost everything with fresh fruit in the pastry kitchen. Split in half, stuffed with an almond and sprinkled with ground pistachios was the best idea I unearthed looking at recipes. Generally cookbooks, at least the ones in the Saucytorium, recommend doing all the things you’d do with peaches or plums: sorbets, ice creams, clafoutis, galettes, pies, and one book calls for a tart (with an almond flavored pastry cream. Bonus - the roasted kernel of the apricot is what gives the bitter almond flavor, the noyaux, to Amaretto and amaretti cookies, it is not a breed of bitter almonds used to produce these scents. The thing is, you don’t have to like fresh apricots, there is plenty of other fruit around to enjoy.

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