A seasonal recipe
The first apricots of the season were at the farmers market today. Apricots always take me back to a summer vacation in Austria, when our friend Thomas drove us all over the country. (I could write a book about that vacation, we went to so many places.)
One afternoon he took us to a gasthaus, which was essentially somebody’s home in the countryside set up as a tiny restaurant. They kept chickens, which were clucking noisily on the other side of a wooden fence, waiting to end up on a plate in the form of backhendl, the delicious Austrian version of fried chicken.
For dessert we had marillenknödel, which I’d heard of but never had. Thomas told us his mother always made them, and that his girlfriend, Gerhild, made them from the family
recipe. She promised to make us some.
There was a catch, though. None of the apricots in Vienna came up to Gerhild’s standards. It wasn’t until we were on a road trip to Slovenia and Hungary that we found adequate apricots, at a roadside farm stand in Hungary, where a little boy was watching Aladdin on TV, dubbed into Hungarian.
Back in Vienna, Gerhild was true to her word, and we stuffed ourselves. Here’s the recipe, using American ingredients and measurements.
Ingredients
20 or so, depending on size, fresh, ripe, unpitted apricots
16 oz sour cream
6 oz AP flour
6 oz wheat germ
1 cup breadcrumbs (whole wheat if you have it)
2 tbsp butter
Method
- Melt the butter in a frying pan and toast the breadcrumbs in it until they are brown
- Mix the remaining ingredients so they form a ball of dough. Let it rest for 20 minutes
- Break off and flatten pieces of the dough and wrap each piece around an apricot so it’s completely covered and sealed.
- Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. Drop in the apricots and boil until they float (about 10 minutes.)
- Roll the boiled apricots in the breadcrumbs. Eat them as is, or top them with melted butter and sugar.
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