08 Jul 2025
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, makes the most of the fruit from her husband’s apricot tree.
My husband’s prized apricot tree has borne fruit. This is an event, because in the seven years since it was planted, it has only produced three measly apricots, and
they were hard and largely flavourless.
This summer, one year after its inaugural but meagre fruiting, it has gifted us twenty-six plump, blush-orange apricots. Most are still on the tree, but some fell in the recent winds – our young tree not yet being hardened to unseasonal gusts.
The apricots that fell were greedily gathered by my husband, who looked a bit like Gollam from Lord of the Rings. I may even have caught him sniffing the fruit and murmuring, “Preciousssss…”
Precious is right, though. Unlike the apricots you can buy at the supermarket, which are often quite muted in flavour, the ones from our tree are brimming with floral sweetness and give a good punch of tartness all in the same bite.
With the first haul, my mind immediately began racing through all the delicious things to make with them.
Apricot jam? Perhaps a cobbler? But then I realised that adding a lot of sugar to them would almost entirely mask their natural flavour, so we ended up eating them exactly as they were, au naturel, with just some tangy, crumbly Wensleydale to nibble on alongside.
I’d got the apricot bug, though, and had a hankering to make them the subject of a culinary tribute.
So I bought a couple of the best punnets I could find and began the important business of choosing what dishes to make.
Summer equals salad, in my book, so first up was a sweet-and-savoury mix of apricot with salty, crumbled feta, because feta has been sent to us by the food gods, who know just how superbly it complements anything fresh, juicy and sweet, like watermelon, grapes, or properly ripened cherry tomatoes.
The apricot slices and feta rubble were joined by some peppery rocket for contrast, and sprinkled with sunflower seeds for crunch. Drizzled then with some good olive oil and sherry vinegar, it was food those same gods would approve of.
Next, something indulgent and comforting. A crumble crossed my mind, but I didn’t want to hide the apricots under or inside anything. This led to the idea of a tart, which made sense on two levels: it would glorify the golden apricot both visually and gustatorily, and would also make use of a shortcrust pastry case that I had made for a client’s quiche before realising they’d actually ordered a lattice.
If you don’t happen to have homemade pastry cases to hand, you could use a shop-bought one, or buy some ready-rolled pastry to make your own. Don’t be put off making one from scratch, though, because it’s fairly straightforward compared with other kinds of pastry, and I always remember Nigella advising her viewers that, if you don’t let your nerves show, the ingredients won’t misbehave. Pastry, like animals, can sense anxiety and will play up if it thinks you’re worried. So show it who’s boss, even if it’s all an act.
The tart topping was already fully imagined in my mind – beautiful crescents of apricot laid out in perfectly concentric circles (because – just sometimes – the precise rather than the rustic must be attempted). But the filling was giving me pause.
I didn’t want anything too stodgy like a frangipane, nor anything so insubstantial as a no-bake mascarpone filling whipped up with some sugar, which would’ve felt like an injustice to the apricots.
So I decided to make a low-flour custard with more milk than cream for lightness, and not too many eggs so as to give a soft, yielding texture. What really made the dish, though, was lightly poaching the apricots in a syrup infused with lemon zest, which lifted and brightened the whole thing.
The end result was definitely worth all the effort and – best of all – I had an opportunity to dig out my favourite kitchen gadget – my blowtorch, which I used to just catch the edges of the apricots so that their beautiful sunset colour popped against the blackened parts.
Plus I had lots of fun brandishing the blowtorch 007-style and telling my kids I was Bond.
Brûlée Bond; licence to char.
