The recipe, or guide actually, for grilled apricots (or peaches or plums or nectarines…) is simple: tree-ripe fruit and a well-cleaned grill. Ripeness is a no-brainer; a clean grill ensures no transfer of residual flavors from previous grillings. I turn mine up high for a good 10 minutes (my humble brand X gas grill reaches an impressive 500 degrees very quickly) and then give the grates a good wire brushing.
Rolling the fruit halves around in melted butter before grilling prevents sticking. If they are truly ripe and ready, as these small apricots from East Hampton’s Balsam Farms were, they’ll only take 1-2 minutes per side.
One can add a bit of brown sugar in the indentations where the pits were while grilling, but these didn’t need it as honeycomb figured into their final destiny.
There’s a weirdly appealing texture to honeycomb, at least to some. Reminds me of those odd wax candies of a long-ago childhood, like little wax “Coke” bottles of sweet liquids in lurid colors. And just what were those big red wax lips about anyway? I liked them even though they were kind of gross when you got through the sweet parts and were left with the chewy, flavorless wax.
My point? Small chunks of honeycomb dripping over warm grilled fruit on top of ice cream is a rustic and rich change of pace from the cobblers and crisps of summer.
Make the honeycomb bits small enough so they can leave the mouth they same way they entered, via a spoon, as Emily Post helpfully instructs. She applies this rule to all bits of inedibles, which beats spitting stuff out onto your plate or the floor.
