Two noted chefs -- a Fine Cooking contributing editor and a Food Network celebrity -- set my creative juices in motion over the weekend as I prepared for a Sunday potluck.
Two chefs and a caramel sauce
It started last week when I read an article by Abigail Johnson Dodge in Fine Cooking and watched Jamie Oliver of Pukka Tukka on the Food Network. Both chefs created caramel-based apricot desserts. These flavors -- caramel and apricot -- gave me the impetuous to create a potluck dish.
Oliver made a caramel sauce for apricot and pistachio tarte tatin with ease. The Naked Chef, as Oliver is known in England, made candy-making appear to be one the most fundamental of pastry tasks. So I tried two batches. The first failed, not because I violated some Epicurean code, but because I gave up too soon.
The next day everything went according to plan. As the bubbling syrup approached 300 degrees, crystals precipitated out as all of the moisture evaporated away. Soon scattered puddles of golden liquid oozed from under the broken crystal. In a quarter-hour, I had an amber-colored bittersweet caramel sauce.
Back to the potluck. I fretted over what to cook on the drive home from Sunday morning worship. I needed a dish that could be prepared in an hour -- one that could be ready by my 1 p.m. deadline. Then my mind drifted to Dodge's recipe for dried apricot and cranberry upside-down cake (the link takes you to Fine Cooking's current issue). I had my answer.
After a few quick calculations, I lit 30 charcoal briquettes and set the dried fruit to simmer. Oliver's caramel tart and Dodge's upside-down cake met in a 12-inch Dutch oven.
Dried apricot and cranberry cobbler
The cobbler melds Dodge's caramel-bathed dried apricot and cranberry topping for upside down cake with Oliver's puff pastry pie shell for an apricot tart. This isn't a lip-smacking sweet dessert. Instead, you'll enjoy bittersweet caramel sauce that envelops plump apricots and cranberries.
Caramel
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons water
1-1/2 ounces butter
Filling
12 ounces dried apricots
1-1/2 cups orange juice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Topping
1 sheet puff pastry, about 10" by 10"
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
Create caramel before lighting charcoal briquettes for the Dutch oven. In a saucepan over medium heat on a campstove, simmer sugar with water until a light amber caramel has formed.
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