Apricot dumplings
17 May 2021 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI wasn't at all convinced by the apricot dumplings when I was cooking them -- I had visions of a hard lump of undercooked fruit in the middle of a watery mess of suet -- but they were actually quite a success.
The book writes that this is a good way to use "the rather unripe, tart apricots that come from Southern Europe from the end of May to July" (note climate change!), and they were certainly underripe with no signs of ever ripening, as opposed to going soggy. The method is to make up some sweet suet pastry using an ounce of flour, half an ounce of suet, a little raising agent and a teaspoon or so of sugar per fruit, divide it up into the necessary number of balls, roll it out thinly, and enclose each apricot in a pastry casing, sealing the edges well. Then you cook them like plain dumplings in gently boiling water -- I note that the recipe actually says "slightly sugared boiling water", which would have affected the temperature, but I failed to do that -- for five to seven minutes, and serve with melted butter, cinnamon sugar and/or your sauce of choice (I just poured over some evaporated mlik).
The combination of the slightly sweet dough and the slightly tart fruit is a surprisingly effective one; I'm not sure how cooked the apricots were, but they came off their stones cleanly, which they certainly didn't do when I was trying to gnaw at them raw. I suspect the sauce is fairly important, as this helps to moisten and integrate the whole when you are trying to cut up the fruit.
The book writes that this is a good way to use "the rather unripe, tart apricots that come from Southern Europe from the end of May to July" (note climate change!), and they were certainly underripe with no signs of ever ripening, as opposed to going soggy. The method is to make up some sweet suet pastry using an ounce of flour, half an ounce of suet, a little raising agent and a teaspoon or so of sugar per fruit, divide it up into the necessary number of balls, roll it out thinly, and enclose each apricot in a pastry casing, sealing the edges well. Then you cook them like plain dumplings in gently boiling water -- I note that the recipe actually says "slightly sugared boiling water", which would have affected the temperature, but I failed to do that -- for five to seven minutes, and serve with melted butter, cinnamon sugar and/or your sauce of choice (I just poured over some evaporated mlik).
The combination of the slightly sweet dough and the slightly tart fruit is a surprisingly effective one; I'm not sure how cooked the apricots were, but they came off their stones cleanly, which they certainly didn't do when I was trying to gnaw at them raw. I suspect the sauce is fairly important, as this helps to moisten and integrate the whole when you are trying to cut up the fruit.
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Date: 2021-05-19 06:07 pm (UTC)I really liked them, but I haven't seen them in over a decade.
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Date: 2021-05-21 11:13 am (UTC)