An Apple A Day... Especially This Time Of Year
But I also love to cook with apples, making applesauce (as Melissa Trainer recently wrote about) and chutney, as well as baking those beauties into crisps and pies. At the beginning of the year, I took a wonderful class called Art of the Pie taught by Kate McDermott.
One of the best pieces of info I gleaned from this hands-on course was to use a variety of apples in your pie. It makes for a dessert with a whole lot of character. Kind of like the difference between listening to a solo or a symphony. Both are good, but the symphony offers layers of sound, just as the apples bring layers of flavor.
Kate sources her fruit from producers she knows, growers of heritage varieties with obscure names you've likely never come across in the neighborhood supermarket. When choosing apples for baking, here's her advice:
"Gravensteins are one of the earliest varieties, not a great keeper and generally known for making great applesauce...but, they make a fabulous pie with a tart/sweet flavor. Spitzenburgs are a great old time pie apple. Newton Pippins are a great storage apple. Golden Russets another. Just taste your way through. If the sample makes you want to have another bite, that's one of the varieties to put in your pie. Get a few different ones so the pie has a depth of flavor," she said.
If I'm in a hurry and don't have time to make a pie, there's nothing more satisfying than baking an apple. All you need is an apple corer (love my Cuisinart), and then some brown sugar and cinnamon for the space where the core used to live. Bake those sugared apples, covered, in a 350-degree oven for 40 minutes and say hello to the easiest dessert on the planet. If you want to add a scoop of ice cream, even better!
-- Leslie Kelly
Mark on April 27, 2012 at 03:39 PM
Thanks for the excellent post