Dried fruit adds zest to recipes

THERE'S A CHICKEN dish I make that never fails to delight my guests. It's supremely simple, thrown together in under a half hour if I use a store-bought rotisserie bird. Adapted from "The New Spanish Table," by Anya von Bremzen, who, in turn, adapted it from the Catalan chef Ferran Adrià, it's baked in a sauce flavored with tawny Port, cinnamon, citrus zest and—this is the element that always surprises—tangy dried apricots, dried cherries and prunes. The combination of fruit and poultry, sweet and savory, is exotic and festive. It engages the whole palate.
Dried fruit has been prized for millennia for its concentration of sweetness and flavor as well as its virtually infinite shelf-life. Long before refrigeration, and even longer before fresh apricots, plums and figs breezed in via airfreight to boost our spirits in coldest February, our ancestors were savoring and receiving health benefits from these very same fruits in their dried form all year long.

Still, I personally received no benefits from dried fruit until I was well into my teens. I did not like the raisins tucked into the little boxes with the Sun-Maid lady on the front. To be honest, I associated dried fruit either with trail mix—and therefore hiking, an activity I liked only minimally better than eating raisins—or with grown-up fare whose charms eluded me. Whether brandy-soaked and flambéed before being poured over and ruining perfectly good ice cream or in a calf's-liver or red cabbage dish, dried fruit was not my thing.

But years pass and tables turn. As a cook I'd find the versatility of dried fruits, their intense flavor and chewy texture, irresistible even if they were considered health risks rather than the vitamin-, antioxidant- and mineral-laden gems they in fact are. Who can say no to cinnamon buns dotted with raisins, dried apricot strudel, a prune-and-Armagnac soufflé? I'm all for using dried fruit in these predictable ways. But the "Who knew?" factor of coming across a date or a dried fig in a savory dish is something else entirely.

The classic pork loin with prunes and apricots has a lush pan sauce that is dark and fruity but not too sweet; the fruits' natural sugars are cut by lemon juice and plenty of Armagnac. Let the prunes and apricots macerate and plump up in the liquor while the pork is still in the oven, and you can finish up the sauce while the meat rests.

The recipe below for lamb tagine—a saffron- and cilantro-laced Moroccan specialty—produces the tastiest lamb stew I know. I credit a good portion of its deliciousness to the chopped-date-and-toasted-almond garnish that's scattered over the dish just before serving. The sumptuous sweetness of the dates brilliantly balances the dish's salty olives and extravagant spicing.

Like the fruit-strewn Catalan chicken dish described above, my "everything" salad is inspired by a recipe of Mr. Adrià's; like so many Spanish dishes, it bears traces of Islamic cooking of the Middle Ages, when sweet and savory elements frequently inhabited the same plate. This highly satisfying salad has raisins, dried apricots and currants, Manchego cheese, several kinds of nuts, chorizo, fresh mint and fennel, mixed greens, a cinnamon-Sherry vinaigrette and slivered garlic fried to a crisp.

Although a few of the recipes here are rooted in grand and ancient feasting traditions, dried fruits can also be employed to produce big flavor with minimal effort. The dried-fig tapenade, a salty-sweet Mediterranean spread, takes 10 minutes max to prepare—simply a matter of puréeing dried figs, olives, anchovies, garlic, walnuts, herbs and Cognac together. It's scrumptious with grilled meat or vegetables, or atop crisp toasts at cocktail hour—a delicious reminder of summer's bounty, preserved and concentrated, available anytime.