Marillenknödel (Apricot Dumplings)

There are two weeks in high summer when apricots smell the way apricots should. Not the pale, woolly sort that sit in supermarket trays all year, but the ones that come in briefly, flushed and fragrant, almost too soft to handle. In Austria, they call them Marillen, and if you're very lucky, they come from the Wachau valley, where the fruit is small and deep-flavoured and worth building a whole dish around. That window is the only time to make these.

Marillenknödel are not my tradition. I won't pretend otherwise. But I've eaten them in a kitchen in Salzburg on a warm evening when the windows were open and someone put a plate of these in front of me, dusted with sugar and still faintly steaming, and I understood immediately why Austrians speak of this dish the way they do. It sits at the heart of Mehlspeisen, the sweet dishes that are taken seriously in Vienna and the countryside alike, treated not as an afterthought but as the point of the meal.

The dough is made from potatoes, which sounds odd until you work with it. It's soft, yielding, slightly elastic. Each apricot is stoned and given a sugar cube in place of the pit, then wrapped in dough and lowered into simmering water. They bob to the surface when they're ready. The breadcrumbs, toasted in butter with a little Vanillezucker until they smell of hazelnuts and warmth, are the finishing act. You roll the dumplings through them while they're still hot, and the crumbs cling to the dough like a second skin.

This is simple food done well. The kind of cooking where the ingredient does the talking and your job is to not get in its way. Right food, right evening.