When I was a child, we had an enormous apricot tree in the backyard. So, whenever I see apricots, it reminds me of long summers and school holidays. I loved climbing the tree and eating the apricots. Warm and ripe. I still love eating apricots. Now I prefer them not so ripe.
My mum would make jam from the apricots because there were always so many and I remember her jars sitting upside down with warm jam in them. I remember stirring the pot on the stove as the jam bubbled away. I was in charge of not letting it catch. I remember sometimes being bored senseless as I stirred the bubbling fruit. But loved the danger of the bubbling pot and the threat of molten bubbles. And I loved eating the jam. Always on toast. It felt like the pantry always had a jar from her never-ending supply.
I’ve never made jam. Nor jelly. But I did one day see a recipe in Gourmet Traveller for an apricot jelly and I thought wow! You might like to try the recipe, it does look delicious.
I found this recipe for apricot marmalade in my mum’s old cookbook from 1973. It’s very basic, as simple as can be, just two ingredients, but that’s all jam ever is. I don’t ever remember the cellophane! But I still remember the almost treacly dark apricot jam. There were jars of it!
Apricot Marmalade
2 kgs of apricots
1 kg of sugar
Apricots are crushed to make them easier to peel. When they are peeled, the stones are removed. Cleaned apricots are boiled with a little water and are constantly stirred during this time. At the end, add sugar and continue cooking until the mixture becomes thick. From time to time, take out a teaspoon of marmalade, put it on a cold plate, and when a skin appears, you know that the marmalade is ready. The marmalade is placed in jars that are covered with cellophane and left in a cool place.
I love to read Nigel Slater’s cookbooks. I read them like a novel. I do. He’s always so encouraging and thoughtful and unique. He allows my mind to wander. I am always inspired. Perhaps you are too.
In his book Tender Volume II Nigel writes of the apricots of my childhood with their freckles of ruby, rust and chocolate.
“A fine apricot, rich, intense, fragrant, is perhaps the rarest of all fruits. So rare, in fact, that I briefly considered its exclusion in this collection, but to have done so would have been to give up on what can be a sublime and memorable fruit. This is a fruit as soft and tender as a baby’s cheek, with the scent that is part honey, part almond. A fruit whose flesh has notes of peach, brown sugar and orange blossom and the opportunity for pleasure that is too good to miss… A fine apricot will have a cluster of dots, freckles of ruby, rust and chocolate, around its shoulders. It may have a patch of rough skin the size of an old sixpence. Within its velvet skin, it will, glow a deep intense orange, as if lit by a candle flame. You will be able to tease the two halves apart with a single pull, at which point it will almost certainly lose a bead or two of juice. The flesh will be soft and sumptuous, very different from the hard, modern apricot with its sunset blush that so often leads us up the garden path.”
Nigel has lots of recipes to celebrate this little summer jewel in his books and on his website. Sweet and savoury... Apricot and harissa chutney, yes please. Mascarpone cream, apricot & mint. Roast apricot ice. Roast your apricots and make a sorbet! Who would have thought of such a thing? Nigel did. Pies and tatins. Custards and compotes. And look, a softly set apricot jam! His recipe might be more precise than my mum’s and it has timings so maybe, just maybe, use Nigel’s.
But whatever you do. Have some apricots. And if you have an apricot tree, treasure it, and share its fine apricots. Summer is here.
♡.
If you love apricots as much as I do, you might want to celebrate them with an antique apricot ice-cream mould, you'll find it in The Kitchen. 
