Nigel Slater’s recipes for pork with apricots, strawberry granita

There is much camaraderie in the queue for the butcher’s, despite – or is it because of? – our social distancing. Someone is muttering about it being “too hot for pork”. I think, but don’t say, that I can’t imagine it ever being too hot for pork. When my turn comes, I ask, possibly unnecessarily loudly, for six nice loin chops.Pork marries well with early-summer flavours. It pairs happily with broad beans and spring cabbage, with young golf-ball-sized beetroots and diminutive ivory white turnips – but also with gooseberries, rhubarb and apricots. A nip of acidity flatters this meat on a summer’s day. I often splash white-wine vinegar into the roasting juices on a Sunday, or brush pork steaks on the grill with elderflower cordial.I bake the chops with halved apricots, hoping for a bit of juicy to-and-fro between fruit and fat. The melting pork fat mingles deliciously with the softening apricots. I shake in some yellow mustard seeds and a little fennel, too. Some sliced onions I tucked i...