Recipe time: apricot and vanilla compote

This one is in honour of Janine, who took us in when we were driven out of our house and even put up with the temporary residence of our cat, who loves compote on her muesli and who asked for the recipe. It's actually a rip-off of a Claudia Roden recipe and I think the provenance is Turkish - the Turks are absolute experts at puddings so that would make sense.

Before I first made this, I used to find fresh apricots a bit of a waste of effort. Eddie Izzard used to do a routine about how pears are underripe for days and days and days, taunting you with their hardness, then ripe for about 12 hours before becoming immediately overripe and horrible. I find apricots similar, but if anything even more capricious, with an edibility window that seems to be about five minutes. Cooking them is the way around this.

1. Get a bunch of apricots, halve them, and cut out the stone and any stoney stalkey bits. Layer them on the bottom of a frying pan, cut side up.

2. Get some caster sugar and sprinkle it on top. I used about one dessertspoon-full for every three apricots - it doesn't need a lot of sugar because there's so much in the apricots.

3. Get the seeds out of a vanilla pod by slicing it lengthwise and dot as much as you can on the apricots.

4. Put some water on them. They don't need much as, again, there's lots in the apricots. Enough to get halfway up the apricots is more than enough.

5. Put it on to boil on a low simmer. Once the water is boiling a bit, gently turn the apricots to get the sugar and vanilla mixed with the water. Keep it simmering until the apricots get to that nice compotey texture - their firm shape completely lost, but still holding together as discrete half-apricots.

6. Lift the apricots out and into a bowl with a slotted spoon or some such, keeping the syrup in the pan; you'll probably need to drain a bit more syrup back after doing this, as they'll exude syrup once they're out of the pan.

7. Turn the heat right up and let the syrup boil and foam fiercely, not letting it fully caramelise but keeping it on the boil until it's got a nice jammy texture, and the spoon leaves a few seconds' track when you drag it across the bottom.

8. Add this reduced mixture to the strained apricots, stir it together and chillax.

9. A good side for this is ricotta cheese, beaten up with icing sugar and ground cinnamon until it's just slightly sweet. Not too sweet, as the compote is sweet enough.

Recipe time: Persian-style watermelon sherbet

I have no idea if they actually eat anything resembling this in Iran, or anywhere near it. It's just something that I came up with in an idle moment years and years ago. It's dead simple, looks beautiful, tastes amazing, what more can I say?



1. Get some fresh watermelon. About a quarter of a large one should be more than enough - that's how much juice there is in the bowl in the picture above.

2. Squeeze and strain out as much juice as you can. Make sure there's no seeds in it. Bung it in the freezer till it's frozen solid - there's no need to put it in an ice-cream maker or to stir it like you would with a granita, because you're going to shave it instead.

3. A few hours before serving, finely chop up some pistachios (peel them if you're really fancy by soaking them in just-boiled water and squeezing them out of their skins when they're cool enough to handle), some apricots, and (maybe at the last minute) some mint leaves. About a handful of each. Get a pomegranate and pop out all the seeds.

4. Make sure your watermelon juice has been in the coldest part of the freezer, and chill a separate bowl in the freezer well in advance.

5. Take it out and start grating it. This is the arduous part - I used to do it by ploughing into it with a fork, which is what I'd done in the photo, but you might be better off with one of those microplane graters. Even a cheese grater might do - the key thing is to make sure that your shavings come out cold and dry. Transfer them immediately to the chilled separate bowl - it will melt very quickly if you're not careful. If it's all getting a bit molten, put the whole shebang back in the freezer and let it refreeze before trying again.

6. You'll end up with an enormous pile of sweet, refreshing watermelon snow. Take your pistachios, apricots, mint and pomegranates and mix it all in, then add some chilled rosewater to taste. Serve it immediately - it will start melting within seconds.