The Apples of my Pie
We love hearing from our shareholders. After the first week, we received lots of happy stories about how excited people were to have their kitchens covered with apples and the smells of sauce and pies filling their houses. Of course that enthusiasm is what keeps us picking.
But we also enjoy the CSA because we get to learn about the apples along with you. Several shareholders (all of them experienced pie bakers) contacted us to ask why the Duchess apples in their pies turned to sauce. Now that was a surprise - Duchess is considered a pie-makers dream apple. They told us that the apples turned brown quickly after they sliced them and that they seemed softer than usual. Why? So we’ve done some thinking, and we have a guess. Perhaps it is because of all the rain we had the latter half of the summer. The apples are larger and juicier than usual, and generally not as firm as we’ve come to expect. They are also ripening earlier. The extra moisture may mean they just don’t hold up as well as they should in the oven. We’ve started seeing that in some of the other varieties that we have been baking as well.
We hope that as the days and nights get cooler, the later-ripening apples that tend to be more about flavor and less about juice will restore our faith in the apple as the perfect pie fruit. And please keep letting us know how your apples are doing. There is so much to learn.
Picks of the week:
(Click each variety for more info)
We have no idea why, but in the second half of September far fewer baking varieties come ripe than in the first half of the month or anytime in October. Perhaps it is because the summer temperatures seem to return mid-month, and the farmers and homesteaders who selected and saved the old apples didn’t want to bake a pie when it was 80 degrees in their kitchens. Usually we include the famous pie apple, Wealthy, in the Week #2 share, but sadly they dropped off the trees during the heavy, post-hurricane rains a week earlier than normal. We do have one classic baking apple, Summer Rambo, in the mix, but your share this week is heavy with dessert (fresh eating) apples. So bite in.
Chestnut crabs fill the picking bucket.
For those of you new to the CSA who have always considered crab apples as something to be avoided, we have two surprises for you: Chestnut Crab and Martha Crab. The moniker “crab” refers to the size of the fruit (2” or less) and not to the puckery face you get when you eat a bitter apple. Just like those small dogs that have a large bark, Chestnut and Martha pack all their flavor into two bites to make you sit up and take notice. We hope these two little flavor bombs will forever change your mind about small apples. If you don’t like them fresh, you can always use them for jellies and pickles.
The other three apples in your share have been savored by apple enthusiasts for centuries. They come to us from different countries (or so we speculate), but you can find old trees in orchards around Maine. Fameuse (aka Snow) is tasty fresh and in sauce. This year the Fameuse look as if they had been grown downwind of a forest fire. That smokey wash across the skin is called sooty blotch and it is caused by too much moisture in the air, not smoke. It is a cosmetic condition and doesn’t affect the taste or the texture of the apple. With some effort you can rub or peel it off, but it is fine to eat the apples just as they are.
If you cut into your Summer Rambo and notice that it is still firm and greenish inside, keep on slicing til you fill your pie plate. That is when it excels for baking. When the flesh fades to yellow, pair this heirloom French apple with a slice of cheese and a glass of cider. Our friend and apple historian, the late Tom Burford, included Rambo on his list of favorite dessert apples.
One of our favorite dessert apples is Canadian Strawberry. We love its origin story (which you can read on the link) almost as much as the fruit. Perhaps it is the similarity between the small yellow dots that speckle the red skin of the apple and the tiny golden seeds that sparkle on the outside of a strawberry that inspired someone to name one fruit after another. While we’ve raved for years about how wonderful this apple is for fresh eating, we recently realized that we had never cooked with it. So we tried it in a recipe for Potato-Apple Latkes that called for a Golden Delicious Apple. The latkes weren’t great, but the Canadian Strawberry held up well. This gave us the courage to make it into a single variety pie and enter it in our annual pie taste-off. The slices of apple kept their shape while they got tender. The baking favored the tartness of the apple more than its natural sweetness reminding us that you never really know an apple til you try it 5 ways. Much to our surprise and delight, Canadian Strawberry walked away with the 2021 Best Pie trophy.
Our apples come to you straight from the tree, so, as with all fresh produce, please be sure to wash them thoroughly before eating. Some of the apples are grown using Integrated Pest Management by the orchards we collaborate with throughout Maine, and some are organically grown here on Super Chilly Farm.
Recipe of the Week
This recipe was shared by CSA apple picker/packer Lydia Pendergast who adapted it from a recipe by Sue Moran in The View from Great Island. This cake is similar to coffee cake so Lydia recommends eating it while it is still hot. Have it with a cup of tea as the days get colder. Summer Rambo and other baking apples are particularly good for this recipe. Lydia says, “the long bake time on this cake means the apple slices in the middle layer cook down into a delicious sauce that contrasts the dense cake and buttery streusel top - FABULOUS”.
Traditional Irish Apple Cake
Ingredients:
Cake:
2-3 baking apples
½ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
3 Tbs milk
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
⅛ tsp salt
½ cup room-temperature, unsalted butter
Streusel topping:
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup old-fashioned, rolled oats
½ cup cold, unsalted butter
½ cup granulated sugar
Directions:
Grease a 9 inch spring-form pan (optionally, line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper). Preheat oven to 350°
To make the cake batter, start by softening ½ cup of butter. Then whisk together the flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, cream together the softened butter with the sugar until it is light in color and mixes easily. Whisk in the eggs one at a time, followed by the milk, until completely combined.
Gradually blend in the dry ingredients. When completely mixed, the batter will be thick. Scoop the batter into the spring-form pan, and spread into an even layer. S et aside.
To create the streusel topping, use a food processor to roughly chop the old-fashioned oats with the flour and sugar. Cut cold butter into thin slices, then add to the food processor and pulse a few times until it forms a crumb.
Slice the apples, and layer them on top of the cake batter in the spring-form pan until no batter is visible (about two layers). Cover the apple layer with the streusel topping.
Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes to an hour, or until the top is golden brown.