JOIN ME FOR THE WAVE!
IT’S STONE FRUIT SEASON, PEOPLE!
In my mind, it doesn’t get better than stone fruit season–ripe as it is with the promise of baking and aromas and pleasurable eating, but, alas, not everyone is feeling the love this year. There is a wonderful apricot tart recipe as the end of this post, but, first I want to tell you a cautionary tale about a small breakdown in grocery store etiquette. The story begins in the fruit aisle.
I was gathering fuzzy orange-gold apricots into my biodegradable produce bags at my local Jon’s Supermarket the other day when, out of nowhere, I was approached by a lady wearing a wide flower-patterned headband that partially covered her medusa-like reddish hair.
“What are you going to make with all those apricots?” she asked as I was filling my second bag and as she was picking up a bag of her own. (There were a gazillion apricots filling the store’s bins, by the way. There was no shortage.)
Startled, I mumbled that I was going to bake an apricot tart because Jon’s apricots looked beautiful. “It’s always hard to find good apricots,” was my distracted but not unfriendly reply and I kept bagging.
For some reason, my answer seemed to irritate my new friend at the apricot bin. Before I could even begin to tune into the drama unfolding around me, she had pivoted to face the apple aisle and yelled to “Bob,” a casually-dressed man who apparently was her husband, “She’s going to make an apricot tart!” The edge to her voice made her point clear. She might as well have added, “Can you believe that?”
Soon it seemed that people in the vicinity of the apricot bin were staring at us curiously. Bob, however, just proffered a half-disinterested “what?” and kept studying the sale produce. Not to be ignored—especially, apparently, by Bob—the apricot lady yelled to Bob again, this time even more loudly. “She’s making a tart,” trailing out the word tart as if it were a foul four-letter word.
I just stood there. What in the world? Had I wandered into some kind of Sterlingesque cultural minefield by admitting that I was making a tart? Was I being pranked? Candid Camera, maybe?
Or, wait! Was it me? I checked the strap of my purse to see if I was still wearing my Bernie button. Nope. I was clean. No triggers there.
Or, wait–again! Maybe it was just her. Maybe road rage has found its nasty way into the produce aisles, reducing one of our last areas of semi-civility to dust. Or, maybe she just needed a hug…or an apricot.
Whatever. I tied the little twisty tops onto my bags of apricots and ducked into the anonymity of the check-out line. (What? You thought I was going to leave the apricots behind just because I was being harrangued by a stranger? Blue Cayenne had a post deadline! I can be one tough cookie when I need to.)
As I drove home, I made it a point to refocus upon my plan to bake the beautiful apricot tart recipe I had bookmarked in David Lebovitz’s book, Ready for Dessert, and to write a bit about the glories of beautiful apricots. I’d gotten my groove back.
Here is that part of my post.
After I had enjoyed every moment of baking the tart–It is superb, by the way– I started doing a little more research on apricots. Did you know that, fragile as they are, apricots have been around for thousands of years, probably first being cultivated in China and Central Asia? Or that thereafter, they were carried across the Eurasian steppe by what one writer colorfully described as bands of “nomadic, horseback-riding tribesman?” I didn’t know that but reading the history of apricots set me to musing; can’t you just picture rough-and-tumble warriors, pockets packed with apricots, bare-chested except for tight little leather vests… Nevermind.
Apricots are called a lot of names around the world—golden apples, Armenian plums, The Precocious One, yellow plums and on and on. They’ve also insinuated themselves into colloquial expressions. There is an absolutely wonderful Turkish expression that goes like this: “It doesn’t get better than an apricot in Damascus.” (Translation: You can’t show me anything better than that!)
The Persians have an apricot saying, too. When someone makes an improbable boast, the sarcastic response is sometimes, ” when the apricots bloom…” or, “Tomorrow there will be apricots.” The apricot expression is the Persian equivalent of “when pigs fly.”
Lest you dismiss my promise of a great apricot tart recipe with references to apricots blooming tomorrow, here it is– and it’s a delicious gem of a recipe, too. Worth the wait.
Me? I’m going back to buy more apricots tomorrow. I’ve found an Ottolenghi recipe for Poached Apricots with Pistachios and Amaretto Cream that I just can’t wait to try. Tell you the truth, though, I’m really hoping not to run into that downer of an apricot lady again. If I do, maybe I’ll try telling her the one about the nomadic, horseback-riding tribesmen.
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You can buy Lebovitz’ book at Amazon. Here is the link: Amazon.
beautiful ! so glad you were not deterred though waylaid at the fruit shop, well done!
Thanks, Samantha. It is good to hear from you again.