I have childhood memories of my mother making a dried fruit compote, which I used to take great childish delight in calling Fruit Compost. Despite my childhood name for it, it is not at all compost like and is delicious for a pudding served with cream or Greek yoghurt or for breakfast with my “perfect” porridge.
Like many of my recipes it is highly adaptable and sort of dried fruit can be used; chopped finely and soaked in ordinary tea overnight. The tea is partially absorbed which plumps and softens the fruit, and forms a lovely rich syrupy sauce with no added sugar. I used plain old PG tips – or builder’s tea – as we call it, Earl Grey would work well, but I think a fairly robust tea is needed to be tasted above the fruit. Interesting the day after I made this I found a recipe card in Waitrose that used fruit tea to soak the dried fruit.
Dried Fruit Compote (Serves 4 for a pudding or 8 portions as a porridge topper)
12oz dried fruit roughly topped (I used a mix of apricots, prunes, plums & figs)
½ pint strong black tea
Put the dried fruit in a bowl and pour over the hot tea and leave for 12 hours. Serve chilled. The compote will keep in the fridge for several days.
I have just made another version of this, which was even easier as I put the tea bag into the bowl of dried fruit and then covered with boiling water and left to infuse overnight.
