Middle Eastern Fruit Salad

This is a beautiful way too make fruit salad, especially over winter. You can serve it warm or cold and it makes a wonderful accompaniment to porridge, muesli or yoghurt. It also makes a wonderful dessert, served warm with ice cream, custard or yoghurt. You can use any dried fruit that you like.

100-150g of each of dried apricots, dried peaches, dried nectarines, dried apples, and prunes .

1 cinnamon stick

3 whole cloves or 1/2 tspn ground cloves 

a pinch of saffron

1 tspn of honey

1.5 tspns of real vanilla (if you have a vanilla pod, split that and use that)

Put all the ingredients in a heavy based saucepan. Add enough cold water to barely cover. Bring to the boil slowly and then turn heat down and let it simmer uncovered for about 15/20 minutes or until the water is mostly gone and everything is soft and stewy.

You can serve it like this, warm or cold or cool it completely and add some chopped pistachios and a sprinkling of rose water. You could also add a piece of orange or lemon rind when boiling it if you desired.