FRESH IDEAS FOR DRIED FRUIT

Transform sweet and savoury dishes with Diana Henry’s inventive recipes using those often hidden storecupboard gems

- Diana Henry

Whenever I put together lists of useful storecupboard ingredients, many of them are relatively ‘new’ to cooks in the UK. Japanese miso, Middle Eastern date syrup, Italian nduja – I wasn’t buying these 10 years ago. Not everyone will think they’re necessary, but if you’re making simple food, the flavours these ingredients deliver are transformative. There are others, though, that nobody gets excited about because we’re so used to them. Take dried fruit: raisins, currants, sultanas, tubs of prunes and boxes of dates. We associate these with Christmas, old-fashioned bakes (my mum used to make wonderful dried fruit pastry squares) and, not to put too fine a point on it, keeping our bowels in order. But, I couldn’t cook without dried fruit. It’s ancient – the first mention of dried fruit was on Mesopotamian tablets dating from 1500 BC – but it’s also a fundamental part of many cuisines, including Iranian, Moroccan, Spanish (at least certain regions), Turkish, Sicilian and Russian, to name a few. In fact, the last time I saw a magnificent display of dried fruit – a multicoloured patchwork of stripes and squares made with smoked dried pears, sour cherries and dried persimmons – was in one of Moscow’s huge markets.