PEACHES AND APRICOTS - SUMMER ALL YEAR ROUND

When summer comes, it is accompanied by one of the greatest joys of the season, namely apricots and peaches. Arriving in Europe from China just two centuries ago, apricots and peaches rapidly spread around the warm fringes of the continent, naturally because people liked them so much.

For memory and growth

Thanks to its sugar content the apricot possesses excellent flavours and swiftly satisfies the feeling of hunger. It contains many vitamins and microelements which put you in good spirits and make you feel strong; the high iron content is very important for anaemia and cardio-vascular diseases. If you suffer from indigestion, apricots will help you to combat this; they also help to loosen the phlegm when you have a dry cough. This fruit is especially good for children; it stimulates growth and fortifies the health.

It helps the stomach to work better, normalises the acid level and, besides this, improves the functioning of the liver and the gall-bladder. Apricots also benefit the kidneys when they are inflamed and helps to remove waste products from the body. Besides this, apricots reduce the risk of lung, stomach, bladder, oesophagus and throat cancer occurring. This is owing to the high carotene content. Thanks to the high phosphorus and magnesium content, carotene boosts the working of the brain and improves the memory.

It is of course best to eat fresh apricots, which contain sufficient amounts of cellulose, are not very high calorie and also have sufficient beta-carotene and provitamin A,

Everything in the world has some shortcomings, even apricots. If your thyroid gland is not functioning properly or you have hepatitis, then it best not to eat apricots. In this case, the carotene contained in the fruit is simply not assimilated, it is therefore much better to take pure vitamin A. If you have diabetes, then it is best not to eat apricots, since that they contain a large amount of sucrose. Some people like to eat the kernels from the apricot stones, but sometimes these can cause serious poisoning. Vegetable glycoside amygdalin (an extremely bitter substance) contained in apricot kernels, which breaks down in the bowels, forming a potent fibrous poison, hydrocyanic acid. You should only eat sweet-tasting kernels and then no more than 20 per day.

Apricots in Azerbaijan

The apricot is very fussy about the soil it grows in. It needs good soil which is not swampy and contains a minimum amount of clay. Large, early ripening luize, salah, early silistren, Hungarian, and royal sorts are suitable for the amateur grower.

The experienced agronomist Latifa Zeynalova says that apricots on the land of Abseron, where the layer of fertile soil is not very thick, only live 5-10 years; they produce a good harvest in the last two years and then rapidly wither. Grafted sorts produce a good harvest, with large, sweet (in spite of the saline soil) fruit. Last year 40 buckets of apricots could be gathered from a single tree. But a tree like that only lives for five years.

The best apricots, the agronomist asserts, are those from Naxcivan, and the best of those are Ordubad apricots. "It is apricots from Ordubad that are really hard to find; there are hardly any at all on the markets in Baku," says Zeynalova. "These apricots are distinguished by a different aroma, their large size, their very sweet taste and, what is most important, their small stone."

Peaches and medicine

People's tastes vary, but it is hardly likely that you will find anyone who does not like peaches. Women are particularly fond of them because this fruit is low in calories; one ordinary peach has only 35 calories. Besides this, the unique aroma is an excellent antidepressant, improves the mood, stimulates the memory and brain functioning and improves concentration.

In the East, especially in China, since the earliest times, the peach has been considered a symbol of youth and longevity. Modern medicine recommends peaches as a diet food, a food for children and pregnant women. Dieticians note several basic nutritional properties. Firstly, it is a general tonic, which is important for sick people whose bodies are exhausted. From the very earliest age peach juice helps an infant to gather strength. Peach juice is a good additional therapy (but in no way a cure!) in cases of stomach disorders accompanied by low acidity levels.If you drink peach juice 15 minutes before a meal, it will help to prevent constipation, including serious stool retention. You can also drink peach juice when suffering from bladder stones since peaches are a diuretic and help to wash urine sand out of the bladder. Peaches benefit people with heart diseases, since they contain potassium salt, which strengthens the heart muscle and acts to prevent disruption of the heartbeat. Potassium and phosphorus improve the functioning of the brain, help to boost the memory and thus heighten people's ability to work.

It is important for pregnant women to know that peaches raise the level of haemoglobin in the blood. This is also good for children who are not very healthy. When you have a cold, the high vitamin C, A, and B content in peaches will boost your immune system, which helps to prevent viruses and infections from entering the body. But the benefit from eating tinned peaches is in this case as in others, fundamentally minimal, since the vitamins, especially vitamin C, tend to lose their efficacy rapidly. Of late, it has become increasingly popular to eat nectarines, and therefore people are asking in what way these fruits are nutritious. In actual fact, both fruits are equally nutritious, so it's just a matter of taste here.

Peaches in Azerbaijan

It is not at all difficult to select a good peach. The normal, ripe fruit is bright-coloured, with a fragrant aroma and, if you squeeze it in your hands, it is slightly springy. There are very many sorts of peaches. They differ in shape, colour and taste. Besides this, peaches differ according to the district they come from. The gardener Latifa Zeynalova says that peaches grow in limited zones in Azerbaijan. "There are hardly any on the Absheron peninsula, since peaches just don't take root in that soil," the gardener says. "But peaches do grow in the south, in Lankaran, and in the Qax, Saki and Zaqatala districts."

She advises that it is best of all to choose peaches from the northern districts, when buying at the market. It is worth paying attention to which ones the bees and wasps are settling on. It is most likely that these peaches are the tastiest, and naturally they are organic, grown without any kind of chemicals. But, don't get upset if you have bought peaches that are not very ripe; they will ripen in two or three days. In our country most of the sorts look alike. Only the so called fig peach differs slightly in its appearance (although its beneficial properties are just the same as those of other peaches). It has nothing to do with figs, it is just shaped a bit like a fig. Nevertheless, it does differ from the others in an advantageous way. The flesh of the fig peach is white and easily comes away from the stone. All of this sort of peach is sweet, even the flesh close to the stone, which is a rarity in other sorts of peaches.

If you buy peaches in shops and supermarkets, be very careful. They often sell imported fruit there, which has been treated with all kinds of chemicals to stop it from spoiling quickly. Alas, you can only check how much they have been treated with chemicals, when you get them home. Simply break the fruit open and see whether the stone is dried up and shrivelled. I don't advise you to eat fruit like that raw, since that fruit has most likely been kept at the shop for a long time (or it was delivered to it by sea or by rail and during that time the stone has managed to dry out. Don't throw peaches like that away. Make stewed fruit, jam or bake a pie out of them. 

APRICOT JAM

You need 1 kg of firm apricots (Ordubad apricots) and 1 kg of sugar. Sort the apricots, wash them and carefully remove the stone. Crack open the stone and put the kernel back into the apricot. Place the apricots in a fire-proof bowl. Put the sugar into a saucepan, add one glass of water and put the saucepan on a medium heat.

Stir the contents of the saucepan with a wooden spoon until the sugar has completely dissolved (if it begins to burn slightly, add 1-2 tablespoons of hot water). Bring the syrup to the boil and immediately pour it over the apricots. Allow it to cool and then carefully pour the syrup back into the saucepan, bring it to the boil again and pour it over the apricots. 

You need to repeat this process at least a minimum of three times (the more times you repeat this process, the richer the jam will be). Put the hot jam into ready prepared jars and wrap a damp towel round them. Wipe the top round and seal with a lid straight away. Allow them to cool. Store the jam in a cold place. If the apricot kernels are not very tasty, then they can be replaced with walnuts or almonds chopped into quarters. But Ordubad apricots always have tasty stones.

PEACH JAM

It is best to pick ripe, yellow peaches for jam, but not too soft, so they don't turn into porridge during the jam-making. So, that the jam does not crystallise, put some citric acid into it. 

Ingredients: Granulated sugar - 1.3 kg; water - 1 glass; peaches - 1 kg; citric acid -0.25 of a teaspoon; vanilla - a drop on the end of a teaspoon, 

To prepare the syrup, put the water in a bowl or an enamelled saucepan, add the sugar and stir. Heatthe mixture to boiling point. Skim off the foam with a perforated spoon. Cut the peaches into segments and immerse them in the boiling syrup. Bring the syrup with the peaches to boiling point and switch off the gas. Cover with a towel and leave to steep for six hours. After that, bring the saucepan to the boil, turn down the gas to medium and boil for approximately half an hour. Just before the jam is ready, add the citric acid and the vanilla, stirring it in thoroughly. Jam made from this recipe is a red amber colour with whole segments of peach in it.

DRIED APRICOTS

"Kuraga" is the name given to apricots [in Russian] that have been cut up and dried without the stone (those dried with a stone are called "uruk"). To retain the apricot's natural colour, it has to be steamed in a sieve over boiling water for 10 minutes or immersed in lightly sweetened boiling water for 5-7 minutes. Then the apricots have to be laid out on a clean cloth to dry.

There are two main methods of drying them: the first method is the old-fashioned one of drying them outside in the sunshine for approximately one to two weeks. The second involves using a drying rack or the oven, To begin with, the apricots are dried for 2-3 hours at a temperature of 50-60 degrees centigrade.Then the temperature is raised to 65-80 degrees and they are dried until they are ready, or for as long as you need to. The dried apricots retain 20-30 per cent of the vitamins and 80-90 per cent of the microelements. Besides, they facilitate better assimilation of the fibre in the food; they cleanse the body and stimulate the synthesis of vitamin C, of which there is a deficiency, especially at the beginning of spring. So, in winter your own dried apricots will easily bring a bit of summer into your home.