
The vast majority of fruits are better, or at least as good, fresh as they are cooked. But there are exceptions - quince aren't even edible without cooking (they won't kill you but it's like chewing wood) and sour cherries are a chore to eat out of hand but make excellent pies and especially, sweetened dried cherries. Other fruits are perfectly fine when fresh but become sublime when cooked. That's how I feel about apricots.
Fresh apricots are...okay. Their flavor is very muted even at the peak of ripeness. It's my opinion that the best thing you can do with a fresh apricot is cook it. Today I'm making poached apricots to serve with a lemon-ginger scone of my own creation, though one could certainly use the poached apricots in dozens of desserts. I was inspired by the cornmeal apricot cake in Regan Daley's phenomenal dessert cookbook In The Sweet Kitchen

After poaching, I'll reduce the syrup and store them for a few days. When the time comes, I will serve them with lemon-ginger scones. And people will swoon over my apricot dessert. For real.
Ginger-maple poached apricots recipe
Ingredients:
1 pound fresh apricots
1/2 cup maple syrup (don't use grade A - it has the lightest flavor)
1/2 cup sugar
About 1 ounce fresh ginger root
Lemon
Water
Instructions:
Wash and half the apricots into a bowl. Discard pits.

Peel and slice the ginger into 1/8-1/6 inch thick slices. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the outer zest from the lemon. Keep the rest of the lemon to make lemonade or something.
Put maple syrup, sugar, ginger, and lemon peel into a small saucepan. Add 1 cup of water, stir to dissolve sugar. Add apricots to pan, then add enough water to just cover the apricots.
Turn on heat very low - the idea is to keep the liquid just under a simmer.
Cook for 30 -45 minutes, until the apricots are still intact but soft. Remove apricots to a jar.
Boil remaining liquid with ginger and lemon peel until it's reduced to 1 cup plus a bit. It should be a pleasantly thick syrup.
Strain the syrup through a strainer and pour over the apricots, then keep them in the fridge until use (up to 3-4 days).
Coming soon: my lemon ginger scones - good with these apricots as a shortcake style apricot dessert, or on their own with lemon curd or butter.
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