The Canal House's Wine-Poached Apricots with Ricotta

All week long, Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton of The Canal House will be sharing their recipes from last year's Canal House Cooking, Volume 8: Pronto! And we're giving away a copy every day this week. Open up a bottle of Sangiovese and follow along to bring a little Italy into your home.

Today: Drunken apricots that will throw a party in your mouth.

We planted bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare "Purpureum"), which is a culinary herb, in our garden a few years ago and it took off. Each spring it comes back fuller and more vigorous than the year before. By midsummer, the tall, feathery plants are blooming lacy yellow flowers (which eventually bear the tiny aromatic seeds we cook with), just as the first apricots appear at our local orchard. We love the combination of these two flavors: the perfumed apricots and the licorice of the fennel. We keep some of the flavorful syrup from the apricots to make a refreshing drink with bubbly Prosecco, or with sparkling water over ice.

Wine-Poached Apricots with Ricotta

Serves 6

For the Apricots

1 bottle white wine
4 branches fennel fronds, preferably with their flowering heads
6 black peppercorns
1 1/2 pounds apricots, halved and pitted

For the Ricotta

2 cups finest fresh ricotta
1 tablespoon sugar

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

We're giving away a copy of Canal House Cooking, Volume 8: Pronto! every day this week! To enter to win today's copy, tell us in the comments: What's your favorite boozy dessert? We'll choose winners next Monday, July 28th.

Photo by The Canal House. Excerpted from the book Canal House Cooking, Volume 8: Pronto! by Christopher Hersheimer and Melissa Hamilton. Reprinted by permission of The Canal House. All rights reserved.