Marillenknödel

In order to find the very best apricots, and perhaps this going without saying, one has to leave Vienna. From the Franz Josef train station, from where all lines lead north, it is but an hour by train through mostly small towns and flat agricultural land to the town of Krems an der Donau. Located at the confluence of two rivers -- one, suffice it to say, being the Danube -- it is, among other things, the gateway to the beautiful Wachau Valley, a region known for its wine and, since the nineteenth century when commercial farming took off, its prized apricots. Orchards laden with the golden fruit cover around 300 hectares of the valley, where the rich soil and sunlit slopes make for apricots that are exceptionally sweet, plump, and intensely flavoured. Every year, around 100,000 trees produce 3,000 metric tons of apricots, whose harvest begins every year in July. This year -- or so the ORF reports in its piece about the annual apricot festival in Krems (because there has to be a festival, complete with an apricot prince and princess and the ceremonial slicing of the country's largest apricot cake) -- has already been a good one for the apricot harvest, though farmers will only know if it'll be a very good year as the month plays out.

The Marillenknödel, which is in fact apparently most associated with Upper and not Lower Austria -- if such differences matter at all, given its actual origin isn't Austrian but Czech -- is one of the best delivery vehicles for apricots from the Wachau. I think such things are best left to restauranteurs and Austrian grandmothers with the necessary expertise and time on their hands, personally, but should you be so inclined to try this at home, here's how they're made. First, make a dough out of Topfen (also known as Quark, the aforementioned grainy cream cheese), flour, room-temperature butter, vanilla, an egg, and a pinch of salt. Second, pit the apricots (which apparently you can do with the handle of a thin wooden spoon, should you be so daring) and replace the stone with a sugar cube (as if the very best Wachauer apricots need to be any sweeter, but never mind). Roll out the dough, fold pieces of it around the whole apricot, be sure it's sealed, and then it's ready to be boiled for between 10-13 minutes until the dough is cooked and the apricot within tender. The final and I think all-important step is dressing the cooked dumplings in buttery, cinnamon-scented breadcrumbs and dusting them with a final flurry of icing sugar.

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