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Apricot Fritters
Canned or dried apricots can be used. If dried, soak overnight or thirty-six hours in as much water as they will absorb. Drain them, whether dried or canned, and put the juice in a saucepan, with sugar enough to make a rich syrup, and cook until thick and clear. Dip each piece of the apricot in the batter, or take two pieces in the spoon with the batter and drop into boiling fat and fry until a golden brown. Drain, and serve with the syrup passed with them.
A straightforward fruit fritter that depends on two things the original leaves unstated: a batter and a fat temperature. Both are worth settling before you start, since the apricots go in and out of the pan quickly.
- The batter is not given hereThe recipe assumes a general fritter batter printed elsewhere in the book. Any standard one works: roughly 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, a pinch of salt, 1 egg and about 2/3 cup milk, beaten smooth and left to stand fifteen minutes. It should coat a spoon thickly and fall in a ribbon, not run off.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" means 365-375F. Below that the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy; above 385F it colours before the inside sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash, and give it a minute to recover between them.
- Dry the fruitThis is the hinge. Drained apricots are still wet, and wet fruit sheds its batter into the fat. Blot each half between towels and, if the batter still slides, dust the pieces lightly with flour before dipping.
- Soaking dried apricotsThirty-six hours is longer than modern dried apricots need; today's fruit is softer and less thoroughly dried. Eight to twelve hours in cold water, or forty minutes in hot, brings them back to a plump, pliable state. Keep the soaking water for the syrup.
- The syrupCanned apricot juice is already sweet, so start with about 1/4 cup sugar per cup of liquid and taste. Cook until it coats a spoon, roughly 220F on a thermometer; cooked much further it will thicken stiffly as it cools. A squeeze of lemon keeps it from tasting flat.
- Sulfured fruitBright orange dried apricots are sulfur-treated and hold their colour; unsulfured ones are brown and taste more strongly of the fruit. Either works, but unsulfured halves give a darker, more caramel syrup.
- Yield and servingA pound of canned halves or 8 oz dried should make somewhere around twenty fritters, depending on whether you fry one piece or two at a time -- enough for four to six. Serve them within a few minutes of draining, with the warm syrup in a jug alongside rather than poured over.