Sweet Fasting
Oshav (dried fruit compote)
Dried fruit stewed in its own soaking water, drunk through the winter and set out on the Badnik table.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 12 hr 10 min
- Cook
- 40 min
- Total
- 12 hr 50 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 10 ingredients
Method
- Rinse all the dried fruit under cold water. Grit collects in the folds of home-dried pears in particular.
- Put the pears, apples and prunes in a large pan with the two litres of cold water and leave them to soak overnight. The soaking water becomes the drink, so none of it is thrown away.
- Bring the pan slowly to the boil with the cinnamon, cloves and lemon peel, then drop the heat to a bare simmer.
- After 20 minutes add the apricots and the sultanas. They soften faster than the rest and turn to pulp if they go in at the start.
- Simmer for another 15 minutes, until a pear gives under the edge of a spoon but still holds its shape.
- Take the pan off the heat, stir in the sugar and taste. Home-dried fruit varies from year to year and some batches need none at all.
- Cool, then chill. Oshav is better on the second day and better still on the third, which is why it is made several days before Badnik.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Dried pears
- Dried figs, or a second measure of dried apple; both stand up to the same long simmer.
- Wood-dried unsulphured prunes
- Ordinary dried plums, added ten minutes later — they are wetter and collapse sooner.
