Extraordinary apricots

More: Your canning guide

Recipes

Fresh Apricot Crisp
A crunchy topping sets off Blenheims ― so flavorful you don't have to add much to them.

Chilled Poached Halibut with Fresh Apricot Salsa
Mustard seeds give the salsa a nutty richness.

Apricot-Chocolate-Almond Biscotti
These biscotti are crumbly delivery systems for chewy apricot bits, hunks of dark chocolate, and crunchy almonds.

Grilled Apricot-stuffed Leg of Lamb
The dried apricots swell and soften with the Moroccan-spiced juices of the roasting lamb.

It's not the most perfect-looking apricot, the Blenheim. Its thin skin sometimes has a greenish hue. Being unusually delicate, it's often also slightly bruised.

None of this really matters. Because inside, it's the deep orange of a setting sun, with a silky texture and a taste so rich and tangy-sweet it makes ordinary apricots difficult to take seriously. This extraordinary flavor is what made the Blenheim (sometimes called the Royal) the dominant variety in California until the 1950s.