In Season: January
January is typically a time to drag yourself into detox and to adopt some healthy eating habits for the calendar year. Apricots are a fantastic fruit to tuck into on those hot summer days.
A species of apricot grew wild in Northern China some 2,000 years ago, but what we have today is a different variety, adapted to temperate climates and grown widely around the world. They are a relative of the peach and have a similar velvety skin.
Apricots are both sweet and tart, can be eaten raw and are very well suited to preserving. They contain enough pectin to work well in jams and are used extensively in glazes. They add colour and acid to tarts and pies and their inherent acidity marries well with Arabic and North African dishes where they are prized, both fresh and dried, in savoury dishes. ‘Apricot’, has even become the name of a colour, a kind of orange-yellow.

Seasonal Ingredients

Featured Recipes
- Pumpkin flowers stuffed with prawn (bong bi don thit)
- Market vegetables, cooked in a clay pot (u cu tay cam)
- Choko, stir fried with beef and garlic (trai su xao thit bo)
- Penne with prosciutto, peas and mint
- Green chilli and coriander steamed mussels
- Asparagus and green tea noodle salad with Thai prawns
- Zucchini flower fritters with feta and basil
- Corn chowder
- Corn fritters
- Udon soup with roast duck, broccoli and coriander

Hot Tips
Rare roast beef
Using a meat thermometer helps to determine precisely when the beef is cooked to rare. Simply insert the thermometer into the centre of the thickest part of the beef (avoiding the bone, fat and gristle), it will be cooked to rare when it is 50°C, medium-rare will be 55°C, medium is a little over 60°C.
Glossary
Labneh
Labneh is a type of cheese made from draining the moisture from yoghurt.


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