A salad for Miss Manners

This week, I make a terrible cultural omission and attempt to redeem myself with an apricot fool. It’s all going on.

Melon bothering again.

This weekend, we had friends over for lunch, a concept with which I have a passing familiarity. On Friday, I scribbled out a menu, made a list and strode out into the village dragging my shopping trolley behind me. I sniffed apricots and cheeses, tapped melons, examined chickens, picked up the good salted butter. Then I sat in the Marine Bar and congratulated myself over a glass of Perrier on my excellent shopping technique while also considering who might play me in the movie of my life.

On Friday evening, I did most of the prep and Séan laid the table, so on Saturday morning there wasn’t really very much to do other than fry the halloumi and shove a couple of chickens in the oven. Our friends arrived. Everyone was charming, funny, with just the perfect amount of Main Character Syndrome. This lunch was practically running itself. I was virtually a guest at my own table.

And then on Sunday morning, I was pottering about tidying up and there, in the fridge was a nice clean Bonne Maman jam jar half filled with vinaigrette. Oh. I opened the salad drawer and there it was. A bag filled with a Mr McGregor’s garden-worth of fastidiously washed lettuce. I’d forgotten to serve the salad, the green salad that by law must follow the main course of any French meal. I comforted myself that I had at least remembered to serve the cheese before pudding, as is traditional on this side of the Channel, and I hope this will be taken into consideration at sentencing.

I hope it will be remembered that I am of previous good character, and that if worst comes to worst, a file would fit perfectly into a quatre-quarts if it is baked in a loaf tin.

The end of an eight-hour lunch.

Apricot fool with an almond chocolate biscuit

In a departure from the usual – I normally give a main-course recipe here, and construct the menu around that – I decided this weekend to give you a pudding recipe that makes the most of the delicious apricots I can’t stop buying right now. It is quite an elaborate pudding, so it didn’t seem quite right for my weekly market posts. Be not afraid, however. Every single stage is very simple and doesn’t require any particular skill. If you didn’t want to make the biscuits or the candied nuts, you could simply make the fool and serve it with some grated chocolate on top, and/or some toasted flaked almonds.

I use Noilly Prat Ambre vermouth in the poaching liquid for the apricots. NP is made here in Marseillan and rosebuds, vanilla, orange peel, cardamom and cinnamon are used in its aromatics.  Ambre is made in small quantities and is not exported, it’s hardly sold outside of the Hérault, but you can use any sweet vermouth or wine you consider would pair well with apricots. But if you’re ever in Marseillan, do visit the Noilly Prat chais and try their Ambre and other vermouths either on their own or in cocktails in their pretty courtyard.

The dough is enough to make 14 biscuits, and I serve the extras with coffee