Dried Fruit Compote

This compote is wintery with the earthy notes of spice, but summery with the sweetness of fruit. It’s soft and luscious, it tastes of Christmas with cloves and cinnamon, sweet and faintly of brandy or port. It’s warming, in a sense, comforting perhaps. It’s fresh and clean also. In other words, it’s endlessly versatile.

Dried fruit compotes have been part of our fridge staples for a few years now. Mainly they were born out of a need for something different in the middle of winter than apples and mandarins, or trying to make a dent in a large bag of dried apricots or dried figs. We would soak them overnight in hot water sweetened with a squeeze of orange, a peeling of rind, a teaspoon of sugar and drop or two of vanilla. The next morning the fruit would be plump and almost silken while the vanilla-citrus syrup had perfumed the apricots or figs. We eat the compote atop soaked oats and yoghurt for breakfast, or vanilla ice cream for dessert. But this fruit compote is slightly more structured in its preparation. That’s not to say you can’t whip it up in 10 minutes (plus soaking time), or alter the recipe to your tastes, but the point is, there is a recipe, and it comes from quite a delightful book, La Cigale.

I was driving across town the other morning with my parents, or rather they were driving me due to such intense exhaustion that I moved back home for a day of care and comfort and good food. They began telling me the story of La Cigale, the French market and café in Auckland. The car radio was switched off and as we drove closer and closer to our destination the story was described with an increasing sense of urgency; it needed to be told.

The long story short, my father said, is a New Zealand woman whose family owned a fabric importing business. They travelled through Europe sourcing fabrics and along the way fell in love with France. Later the woman, with her husband, took over the fabric business but motivated by a changing economy and a passion for all things French, they turned the fabric warehouse in Auckland into a French bistro and market. It is now something of an institution.

I have never been to La Cigale, though I have heard plenty of wonderful things about it. If this fruit compote is anything to go by, La Cigale – the book, the market, the bistro – is a delicious little pocket of France in New Zealand. One last note, the dried fruit is soaked in black tea. We used earl grey blue flower for more perfumed, floral hints. I think weak black tea would be best – strong tannins might tarnish the softness of the fruit. In saying that, perhaps a white tea would work well too.

Dried Fruit Compote

Feel free to change the fruit to your liking, and to add more cold tea for extra moisture or desired consistency.

250 grams each of stoned dates, figs (cut in half), prunes, apricots
250 grams mixed dried fruit – pears, peaches, pineapple, apple, etc
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
juice and rind of 2 oranges
2 cups cold tea

Place all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Leave to infuse in the pot for 3 to 4 hours.

Apple Oat Fritters

I went for a walk this morning around the waterfront. The harbour was flat, not a sparkly-blue-come-jump-in-me sort of flat but more a dull flat, like the sea was bored. There were hardly any runners, or tourists, or families on Crocodile Bikes. There were a couple of men standing around orange road cones looking at graffiti. There were a few rowers out, their coach standing on the edge of the walkway doing a strange sort of rower Thai chi towards them. I wondered when this walk, this mundane exercise, would be over. Just as I thought that another far more exciting thought entered my head: BRUNCH! Or, more specifically, apple and oat fritters.

I walked home with a renewed sense of vigour, planning the recipe in my head as I went. I was thinking of thick fritters, flecked with the red and green of grated apple, spiced with cinnamon and sweet with honey and apricots. Would it be melodramatic to say that the harbour suddenly seemed more exciting, more blue, more alive with activity??

The basic recipe for these fritters comes from Chocolate and Zucchini. I’ve made this carrot version a few times with oats, leaving out the nutritional yeast and using an egg as a binder. (As long as the eggs are good quality and from free range hens I see no reason to leave them out of my diet.)

Once home, I soaked several chopped dried apricots in a cup of hot water with a tablespoon of honey. In a bigger bowl I mixed 100 grams of rolled oats, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a pinch of allspice. I grated one and a half apples. After 15 or so minutes the apricots were softened slightly and nicely sweetened. I stirred the apricots, honey-water and apples into the oats. Taste a pinch at this point, for sweetness. Mix through a beaten egg, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

In the fridge the rolled oats absorb the sweet, spicey, appley water, growing larger and softer, sticking together like Bircher muesli mush. Mmm, doesn’t that sound nice? But, then you melt a knob of butter in a fry pan and mould a heaped spoonful of oat mush into palm sized fritters into the pan. Distract yourself for a moment; empty the dishwasher or make a pot of coffee. Look back at your fritters and see the oats near the heat of the pan begin to bind together as if made with flour. The oat fritters develop a delectable crisp outside with a soft, mealy centre.

I served these oat fritters with yoghurt and a drizzle of apricot jam. Around the plate I sprinkled a small handful of roughly chopped cinnamon sugared almonds which Francesca made. (Recipe to come – they are addictive.)

Makes about 5-6 fritters.

What to do with 5kg of ripe apricots

We may have over extended ourselves with the bounty of Central Otago. But when apricots are $4/kilo it is hard to resist this pink-gold downy fruit.

During our last few days in Central Otago we were trying to use up leftovers: half a packet of lady fingers, a near full bottle of overly sweet pear cider which seemed to taste strangely of bananas, a sheet of puff pastry and several egg yolks. Plus the heaving box of apricots.

Two surprisingly successful desserts emerged from these ingredients.

Apricot Gallette: I baked about a dozen apricots, cut in half and stones removed, in the strange pear cider and about 5 tablespoons of icing sugar until just beginning to collapse and the liquid almost froths around the edges. I greased a round cake tin, laid the sheet of pastry in the bottom and placed the cook apricots, draining off the liquid, on top of the pastry. I then folded down the edges of the pastry to make a sort of cap encasing the fruit.

apricot gallette

Apricot Trifle-thing: We stewed another 10 or so apricots, halved and stones removed, with several tablespoons of granulated sugar in about 1/2 cup of water. Once the apricots were cooked and soft we drained off the liquid in a wide bowl. To the liquid we added a dash of peach schnapps and dipped about 100 grams of lady fingers, laying them in a rectangular dish. Stewed apricots on top of the soaked sponge and then we made a vanilla egg custard. In the fridge to set overnight. We learnt from these experimental-no-recipe desserts that everything improves after a night in the fridge.

After two days in the boot of our car we feared the apricots were beginning to deteriorate; in spite of the wet, miserable and windy Wellington weather.

Apricot Jam: 2.7kg of apricots, 2.7kg of sugar, 2 1/2 cups water makes a lot of jam. Upon opening a jar there is the scent of overly ripe, sweet apricots and dessert wine. The jam is the colour of roaring, licking flames. The flavour is sharp and sweet and intense. This jam serves as a reminder that summer continues in other parts of the country.

A Central Otago Christmas

Central Otago reminds me of the south of France, near Provence and around the Marseille coast with stark cliffs and jagged arid hills. Wild rosemary and thyme grow in abundance; the thyme covering some of the barren hills in a musky purple tinge. Pity then for the colourful array of mullets and dropped Toyota Corollas taking me out of my Provençal dream….

The land is dry and crisp in various shades of pale golds and dull browns. Yet, in this parched landscape is an orchardist’s and winemaker’s paradise. Apricots, cherries, peaches and plums – beautifully ripened near roadside stalls. And like the great wine making regions of France, rows of straight green vines stretch across the land.

View from Felton Road Vineyard

We spent 10 gloriously hot days (28-30 degrees most days) sampling the very best of the region. We visited the cellar doors of some of New Zealand’s best vineyards: Felton Road, Carrick, Peregrine, Rippon, Three Miners. Rippon was beautiful on the shores over looking Lake Wanaka – a wonderful cellar door experience. Three Miners was an exciting find. At the end of a bumpy gravel drive is a modest cellar door, more of a tin shed, but their Pinot Noir and Riesling is smooth and delicious. I am going to drink more Riesling this year.

We bought kilos of cherries and apricots, but more about these in a later post. We discovered the Gibston Valley Cheesery – a wonderfully cool room on a hot day. You can buy a cheese platter matched with Gibston Valley wines to eat outside on the deck overlooking the vines, or sample the sheep, goat and cow milk cheeses at the counter. My favourite was the Balfour, a pecorino style hard cheese.

We spent Christmas Eve day in Queenstown shopping for our feast the next day. We bought a ham, fresh salads, new Jersey Benne potatoes, baby beets, oat crackers for our cheese, plum fruit paste, croissants, marscepone, and bubbles. Georgie and I made a three layered tiramisu that night, allowing plenty of time for the sherry spiked coffee to seep through the lady fingers before dessert the next day.

We roasted the baby beets, peeling their slippery skins off once cool, staining our fingers a purpley-red. The beets were for a beetroot, feta and mint salad – a rather popular addition to our Christmas table. I read not too long ago the rantings of a woman so bored of the beetroot/feta combination that she refused to buy any cookbook that featured a recipe with the two ingredients. Beetroot and feta together is a classic pairing. We added shredded fresh mint leaves to our salad, which not only produced bright Christmas colours but gave the salad a summery feel. Orange segments in place of the mint would add a touch of sweetness.

Christmas beetroot-feta-mint salad

In fact, there are several variations of the beetroot and feta salad if you too fear they are a somewhat tired duo. Add dry roasted walnuts to the salad for a bit of crunch. Slice the feta as you would haloumi and grill it with a generous grind of salt and pepper, serve with the roasted beetroot (as per recipe below) atop grilled ciabatta or other quality bread. For another interesting salad idea add roasted beetroot, cut into wedges, and crumbled feta to cooked orzo.

Beetroot, Feta and Mint Salad

We roasted the beetroot the day before and left them overnight in the fridge covered in a generous dash of salad dressing. This enhanced the earthy, rich flavour of the beetroot.

5-6 small to medium sized beetroot
125-150 grams feta, a sharp, crumbly feta is best
torn fresh mint leaves, a small handful
salad dressing, or a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon mustard

Pre heat the oven to 180°C. Place the whole and unpeeled beetroot in a roasting dish with a dash of olive oil and salt and pepper – make sure the beets are well covered in oil. Roast for 45-60 minutes, or until the beetroot is tender. Remove from oven and allow to cool until just warm. Gently remove the skins from the beetroot, taking care not to pull off too much of the flesh. Cut the beetroot into quarters and place in a bowl. Pour over a couple of tablespoons of salad dressing and leave to sit for several hours or overnight.

Just before serving crumble the feta over the salad but do not mix or the juices from the beetroot will stain the feta. Sprinkle over the torn mint leaves.

Serve as a side with hot or colds meats, or with several other salads for a light summer meal.