SUN DRYING APRICOTS
By Carli Ratcliff
Special Broadcasting Service
291/Sun-Drying-Apricots
Feb 16 2010
Australia
Hot weather is good for some things.
I love apricots, their soft downy skin, their pretty pink speckles near
the stalk, their wonderful shape and the way they sit perfectly in the
palm of your hand. But biting into them often brings disappointment
– mealy, floury flesh, not the soft sweet goodness their beguiling
exterior promised.
Dried apricots tend to be much more reliable, what you see is what
you get. Chewy, sweet goodness. Most of the dried apricots you find
on supermarket shelves are Turkish, grown in the Malatya region of
eastern Turkey. However, if you seek out Australian dried apricots,
at a health food store or farmers’ market, you’ll find the local
ones hail from South Australia. Sun dried they transform to a shade
of burnt orange, even without colour preserving sulfur.
Apricots prunus armeniaca (Armenian plum) are popular across cuisines.
Believed to be a native of Armenia, they have also been cultivated
in China, India and Persia for thousands of years. Spreading along
trade routes (their exotic nature and intense sweetness made them a
valuable bartering tool) and are believed to have been introduced to
Greece, and spread throughout Europe, by Alexander the Great.
Barbara Santich, Australian food historian and head of Le Cordon
Bleu’s School of Gastronomy at the University of Adelaide, recommended
South Australian dried apricots to me on a tour of Adelaide’s Central
Market. On her must-buy list were the apricots, just harvested and
sun dried an hour away in the Adelaide Hills.
It is harvest time now in South Australia. 90 per cent of the state’s
apricots are dried (about 570 tonnes), bagged and sold across the
country or exported. Many apricots are sold at the farm gate direct
to customers, estimating $14 million in sales some years.
John and Madellana Di Cerbo grows apricots, as well as peaches,
pears and white nectarines on their property at Paringa Heights, in
the Upper Murray region, 140-kilometers west of Mildura. Madellana
sun dries the fruit as soon as they are off the tree. She doesn’t use
sulfur or preservatives of any kind, yet her apricots, once dried,
are rich in colour and flavour. The Di Cerbo’s son Joe sells bags of
the dried fruit at Capital Region Farmers’ Market, Canberra.
It takes about two days of very hot dry weather to dry an apricot.
You can sun dry them yourself on a bit of corrugated iron. Being
without a tin roof, I used a flyscreen propped up on a clothes horse
which allows better air-flow. Some people even dry them in the back
of their car, the intense heat speeding up the process.
How to Sun Dry Apricots Halve and stone apricots, if the apricots are
large, slicing into quarters will ensure they dry faster. Arrange in a
single layer on a screen a (clean) flyscreen or a piece of shade cloth.
Ensure that air can flow around the fruit.
Leave in full sun for two to four days. The length of time depends
on conditions in your area. Turn the slices when the first side is
dried to your liking.
Bring the fruit inside at night to ensure dew doesn’t moisten them.
You’ll have a better, faster result if you live in an area with low
humidity. If you are in the tropics, try slow drying them in the oven.
Store in a sealed container. If you are concerned about weevils,
store the container in the freezer.
Suzanne Gibbs’ Apricot and Prune Cake
Prunes are just dried sugar plums (also in season at the moment)
they can be sun dried along with the apricots (see photos), to use
in this cake recipe.