In Armenia you can buy apricot garlands; luscious yellow fruit dried in the sun and strung like lumps of amethyst on long necklaces. They hang from dusty roadside stalls – a legacy of the Chinese silk ...

Once apricots are fully ripe, they will begin to turn brown around the pit within a few days. The last bit of apricot complication is that the whole tree is never ready to pick all at once. The ...

This is a variation on food writer Claudia Roden’s wonderful orange and almond cake, made using the whole fruit. It works a treat with apricots, which take less time to cook, and are every bit as ...