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9 October 2010
Exciting Apples.
"An apple a day?"
By: Julia Gasper When did you last taste an apple pie or pudding that was really good? One that made you think, gosh, so that’s why people went to all that trouble planting orchards all over the place. Chances are, it was a frozen strudel and you bought it in a box. Although my apple trees produced almost nothing this year - perhaps because of the cold winter - the Farmers’ Market in Headington was piled high with unusual apples, and the far vaster open market I went to in Saint-Lô in Normandy last week had dozens of varieties on sale. I came back from France with rather a lot of bottles because the mild, low-alcohol Normandy cider is decidedly palatable. They have a sweet cider that is truly honeyed and the perry is light and crisp like a white wine. But can they make apple pie? We went to a beautiful restaurant called the Manoir de l’Acherie, in a traditional country house with a vast open fire and excellent food on the whole. It was far better value than any establishment of that style you could find in England. Nevertheless, the tarte Normande was boring. It is meant to be an apple and almond tart, and you could get it with ice cream, crème fraîche or even flambé with calvados…still it was boring. The apple slices were prettily set out in a fan pattern on a bed of thin, sweet pastry and that was all there was to it. Not much taste at all. The crème fraîche (silly name, since it’s sour) did nothing for it. This is not a matter of whether English or French is better. The French grow some very exciting apples, such as the Belle de Boskoop which I have not seen on sale here. Its flavour is amazingly intense, pineappley yet bright and it is juicier than a Russet, which it resembles in colour. I will confess that I think the great British Bramley is over-rated. Yes, it breaks down to mush faster than other apples so you don’t have to cook it so long, and it is big so you don’t have to spend so much time peeling or coring before you make your pie or pudding, but its taste lacks something. You have to add a lot of sugar to it to make it edible. I think the reason for its great popularity is that it makes good sauce to go with pork. But it is sharp, and it is only made sharper by adding lemon juice in an attempt to stop it going brown. I prefer the French approach which is to make cakes and puddings with dessert varieties of apple. I recently made, by lucky accident, a really delicious, homely apple pudding which cost me almost nothing. After a foray down at the Warneford Meadow, I came home with several bags of assorted eating apples, and some odd pears too, windfalls, which begged for cooking since their skins were rather leathery. I decided to make a crumble, and used one Belle de Boskoop which I had left over from my trip to France, about five different Warneford apples and the two unknown knobbly pears. Some of the apples were large stripey Cox-like varieties, two were smaller red ones, and there was one of a pale yellow hue. Method: peel, slice and core the fruit, and put the slices into a deep pyrex dish with a lid. Add a generously-heaped tablespoonful of light brown sugar - just one - and a heaped teaspoon of ground, mixed spice. The mixture I used contained cinnamon, coriander, ginger, dill (the ground-up seeds, I suppose), cloves and nutmeg. Stir all this into the apple slices. Never mind if they are horribly jumbled and don’t make a neat pattern, it’s the taste that counts. Add just enough hot water to make it about one inch deep at the bottom, and top it with crumble. There is no shame in buying ready-made crumble, and if you haven’t got any you can always use oatmeal. Finally put a lid on it and put it in a hot oven -number 6. As soon as it is in, reduce the heat to number 4 and leave it cooking on a falling heat for an hour and ten minutes. After that, switch the oven off but leave the dish inside for another hour. I left it overnight. A lovely spicey scent wafted through the kitchen next morning. The pudding had gone cold, but it was absolutely yummy. The fruit had all softened yet had lost nothing in flavour. You couldn’t tell the various kinds apart: they had all blended. It was just sweet enough and subtly spiced. If you think that such a bold spice mix would ruin apples and pears…try it. The clove comes through more than anything else. I swear this pudding tastes as good as chocolate, and it doesn’t need fancy ingredients like wine or sultanas. Don’t ruin it by putting crème fraîche on it. Use proper cream, or some good old British custard! | ||
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