There are times when the very words of a couple or more ingredients evoke the passion one needs to make a new dish—or more, just ask Marcel Proust how he felt about the word “madeleine.”
Jerry Weinberg
So once my mind idly paired the words “ginger” and “lemonade.” I took a stab at a primitive “Ginger Lemonade” fifteen years or more ago, but our long-time chef Mary Ellen Fitz Patrick turned my daydream into a really amazing drink—one, we noticed, that actually seems to make one feel cooler on hot days and, in its hot form, help fight the piercing cold that we in Vermont notice from time to time—say three-fourths of the year. Now everyone’s brother is selling the stuff, but near as we know, we were the first.
Some other serendipitous day I found myself buying organic, unsulfured apricots—the best taste short of early-August fresh-picked.
We needed a sauce for lemon pound cake a la mode.
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 20 apricots (organic, unsulfured – rinsed, chopped into ⅓" chunks)
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon orange zest
- ¼-⅓ cup dark brown sugar
- ¼ cup rum
- 3 Tablespoons butter
Instructions
- In medium saucepan, add the water and the next four ingredients. Cook over medium heat 15-20 minutes. When apricots are soft but still chewy, remove from heat and add 1/4 cup rum (Meyers’s, if you like, or Mt. Gay,both nice) and 3 Tbsp butter, stir with wooden spoon to melt.
- When cool, process to a liquid. Spoon on to desserts (lemon pound cake is nice here), or store covered in a squeeze bottle, refrigerated,removed an hour before use, and squeeze attractive pattern on ice cream or the cake.