An Abundance of Apples

     

We are long in apples right now. Sauce apples, eating apples, cider apples, baking apples, apples my grandmother loved, new-fangled apples (most too sweet for my taste). I stick to my favorites as I find them—I picked up some Jonathans, Cortlands, and Macintosh, last week—and then try local varieties that I haven’t seen before. Last year it was Arkansas Blacks. This year it’s the Wolf River. It looks very much like our Rhode Island Greening (hard to find, now), but not as versatile. Still, I was glad to find it.

The abundance of apples to be had for a very good price got me thinking about how much I absolutely love to cook and bake with this fruit. In fact—and I thought about this long and hard before putting down the words—if I had to choose apples over my other fruit obsession, sour cherries, I think I would have to go with the apples. This feels a little like choosing which of your children is your favorite. While everyone says that’s not possible, there is some recent research saying that, actually, you can—that people do have favorites among their children. So of my beloved fruits, I am a bit more partial to the apple.

This only makes sense, if we consider that, for me, the apple is something analogous to the first-born. I learned to make applesauce when I was very young; it was, if not the first, among the very first of my lessons in cooking at my grandmother’s side. The first pie I ever made was apple (the second, as I recall, was lemon meringue). I made apple butter for years and years before I ever made cherry preserves. Of course, availability has a lot to do with it, what with apples being grown everywhere in great quantities and variety, and sour cherries both few and far between. This is another reason for choosing them—if one had to choose.

Fortunately, I don’t. But while it is apple season and not cherry season, I will certainly put them to good use. And in honor of thinking back to baking in my younger and much younger days, I offer this quintessentially French apple tart. I made it all the time back in the 70s and 80s, when I cooked mostly French food. I haven’t made it in years, but it’s due for a comeback.

Country French Applesauce Tart

This homey tart combines an applesauce base with sliced apples and an apple glaze. Use an all-butter pastry for this. The directions are general; this is more of a method than a recipe. Serves 6.

Tart Pastry 

2 cups a-p flour
8 oz (1 stick) cold unsalted butter
1 egg
½ tea salt
2-3 T ice water

In the food processor, pulse the flour and salt briefly. Place the butter into the bowl, cut into 8 pieces, and turn them over to coat; drop in the egg. Pulse until crumbly. With the machine running, add the water, a little at a time, until the dough comes together. Form into a disc and chill.

The Applesauce

1 ½ lb apples, cut in quarters
3 T butter
½ cup white wine
½ cup sugar
½ tea cinnamon
1 tea grated lemon rind

Put everything into a pan and bring to a boil; reduce somewhat and cook until the apples are soft. Strain, without pressing, the liquid, and reserve. Then put the apple mixture through a food mill. Taste the sauce and add a little more cinnamon if you want; this tart should not be as heavily spiced as an American apple pie, though.

The Tart

3-4 firm, tart apples
1 ½ -2 cups applesauce
1 egg"
The reserved liquid from making the applesauce

Preheat the oven to 400F. Roll the dough out to 11” or so to fit a 9” tart pan with a removable bottom. You will have extra dough, with which you can make little jelly turnovers or a mini version of the tart if you want.

Cook the reserved liquid from the applesauce down until it forms a light, soft, syrupy jelly; add a little sugar if needed. It should be fluid enough to use as a glaze. Thin it with hot water if you overdo.

Put about 2 cups of the applesauce into a small bowl. Beat the egg and stir it into the applesauce. Fill the tart shell about 2/3 full with the applesauce (perhaps 1 ½ cups or so; you will have leftover). Peel and core the apples, and slice them thinly. Arrange the apples in concentric circles, slightly overlapping each slice, working from the outside in and reversing direction of the slices with each circle. Form a little circle of apple and place it the center. Bake for about 30-35 minutes, until the edges of the apples begin to brown. Remove and let cool for at least 20 minutes; glaze with the apple jelly, slightly warmed. Remove the tart from the pan.

                                                                    

Heirloom Apples: Early and Evocative

There they are, sitting right next to the blueberries, producing that cognitive dissonance, that feeling of unease, that always accompanies the reminder that the hottest month of summer is teetering at the apex, ready to tip over into fall at any moment. Joe Pye Weed pinkening at the edge of the pond. Apples at the side of the road.

We do associate apples with fall, after all. But some of the best apples begin appearing in August (even July!), and by late August and early September there are several varieties to choose from. Most people have their favorites, and their favorites for different purposes. For me, they are the ones my grandmother insisted on: Stayman Winesaps, Baldwins, Jonathans, Macouns, Gravensteins, Northern Spys, for eating and for pies; Macs for applesauce; and Rome Beauties for baked apples. Many of these are 19^th century varieties, but many are still grown and, depending on where you live, with a little effort can still be found--even those old pie paragons, Baldwins and Gravensteins. Where you live also dictates what is grown, as apples, like people, have their climatic preferences. In Rhode Island, we have our own Rhode Island Greening, an excellent late-season, all-purpose apple that dates to the 1600s (but is scarce even here in Rhode Island now). When you do find these special apples, it is invariably from individual growers and small farmers; commercial growers breed and select varieties for uniform (often large) size, pretty appearance, and shipping and shelf qualities--for their needs, not yours. The selection is a miniscule percentage of the varieties that were commercially available before World War II, and many of the new, "improved" varieties, like modern tomatoes, are all show and no go. I prefer the taste, texture, and cooking properties of the old ones and seek them out.

The apples that have appeared locally in the past week or so are Lodis and Yellow Transparents. Lodi, a hybrid developed in 1924, is a cross between a Montgomery and a Trasparent; the Yellow Transparent was introduced from Russia in 1870. They are similarly crisp, very juicy, and sweet/tart, and are good for both applesauce and pies. All to the good. But, like dear friends who show up too soon for dinner, they find me unready to fully engage: early applesauce or early apple pie is just too. . .early. A light, simple, free-form tart, however, offers the pleasure of the first apples without the dread sense that it’s time to order the firewood.

Rough Apple Tart

Sometimes called a galette or a crostata, neither of which is technically correct, a spare, free-from tart is a nice casual summer item. It can be made with most any fruit or combination; if you have a peach or some berries hanging around, feel free to add them. It is best when very fresh, so try to plan on removing it from the oven within an hour or so of when you want to serve it. The glaze is optional, but I like it for this otherwise monochromatic tart, all flaky pastry and barely tampered-with fruit.

Crust

1 1/8 cup flour
¼ cup RI johnnycake cornmeal or other fine white cornmeal
½ tea salt
1 tea sugar
8 T cold unsalted butter
2 T lard or shortening
2-3 T ice water

Pulse dry ingredients briefly in the food processor. Drop in butter and toss to cover; pulse 8-10 times until butter is distributed but some is still in large pieces. Add lard or shortening and pulse until mixture is coarse crumbs, about 10-15 more pulses. With feed tube running, add only enough water and run only enough time until dough comes together into a ball; turn out onto a piece of wax paper, wrap, and chill.

Filling, Assembly, and Baking

6 small apples
2 T brown sugar
1 T flour
pinch salt
1 T slivered almonds (optional)

2 T sugar
1 T unsalted butter

2 T currant jelly or apricot jam, plus water to thin (optional)

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Toss the apples with the brown sugar, flour, and salt. Roll the chilled dough out into a rough circle or oval directly onto a flat cookie sheet (it is soft, and difficult to transfer). Don’t worry about the shape; you want it to look thrown together, which it is. It should be about 1/8” thick. Place the apple mixture into the center and spread out evenly and thinly to about 2” of the edge, then roll the edge inward to form a rim. Some empty spots of dough are fine, and desirable. Sprinkle with the almonds and distribute the sugar over the top, including the rim. Dot with the butter. Bake for 25 minutes; the crust should be golden and the apples starting to brown at the edges. Reduce the heat to 350 F and bake about 10 minutes more, until the tart is a nice color; remove to a rack. If you are glazing, melt the jelly or jam, thinning with water if necessary, and glaze the tart lightly, using a dabbing motion, while it is still hot. Let cool on the rack for 15 minutes, then slide tart onto the counter. Cut with a pizza cutter or bread knife, transfer carefully to plates with a spatula (the crust is very thin and flaky—and delicious), and serve plain and pronto, either warm or at room temperature.