28 Sep 2024
Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company FOOD by Elena, looks for new ways to use her bumper crop of apples…
The lawn under our apple trees is once again peppered with orbs of varying shades of red and green, in varying states of rot. Many that are otherwise healthy have been nibbled at by squirrels, while others hit the ground with such a bump that the resultant bruising accelerates the rotting process. Coming across a pristine apple is therefore like winning Olympic gold, so it seems wrong to devour it unceremoniously, but that is the best way to savour it.
For those less immaculate apples, the three Ps await: the peeler, the pairing knife and the pot. I tend to stew down as many apples as possible, because they can be frozen ready for whenever I want a quick weeknight pud: a steaming bowl of cinnamon-dusted, almond-flecked apples under a duvet of wobbly custard is about as comforting as it gets.
But I also have loftier plans for our garden’s autumn bounty, and each year I try at least two new recipes – a savoury and a sweet. I exceeded my own expectations this year with not one, but two savoury incarnations of the humble apple, both of which were gobbled up by the adults in our family, but failed to win the approval of the children.
The kids did, however, demolish the apple crumble cake I made, the recipe for which hails from a blog I came across during some online browsing called applytoface.com.
The blog name already had me chuckling, conjuring up the mental image of the author, Jenny Walters, administering food earnestly to her mouth, with much the same devotion as the follower of a robust skincare routine. Walters’ self-introduction was also diverting – and refreshingly honest: “I am a very perimenopausal stay-at-home mum…”
The cake recipe Walters posted ticks two of life’s most fundamental pleasures: cake and crumble. The crumble cake. I can almost hear the heavenly fanfare as these two pillars of the baking world collide. Naturally, I am hell-bent on trying just about every fruit going in this new way, but expect this first, apple-y foray into the crumble cake domain to be the most successful, given apples lend themselves so beautifully to buttery biscuitiness.
But apples are versatile. As delicious as they are in sweet bakes, their tang and their crispness are also eminently exploitable. My endless endeavours to eat more healthily were met with great rewards last week: the otherwise rather mundane quinoa salad I’d made was more joyous thanks to burst after burst of malic sweetness every time I crunched down on a cube of apple.
Apple in salad, of course, harkens back to the late 1800s and the classic Waldorf salad (not a classic at that time, of course – a departure, more likely).
But now, rather than pairing with just celery and mayonnaise, as per the original, we have free rein to throw just about anything into the mix. I alighted on radishes, for their magenta flourish, feta for a salty counterfoil, and chopped little gem lettuce, all anchored by red, white and black quinoa – the Technicolor of grains.
Apple cider vinaigrette finishes this salad off perfectly, as do some pumpkin seeds and a scattering of fresh coriander.
My experiments with apples culminated in a mistake-cum-success story. One of my FOOD by Elena menus includes sausage rolls made with chorizo and stewed apples, two flavours that complement each other superbly.
I had intended to make a batch with some of my garden haul, but discovered that I was completely out of cooking chorizo (almost always retrievable from the back of my fridge, given its use-by is typically months away). I did, however, find a selection pack of charcuterie, including some slices of cured chorizo. This would have to do.
So by happy accident, and aided by some choice Googling, a new and improved (well, new, anyway) version of chorizo and apple puff-pastry snack was born – the chorizo and apple ‘rose’.
Roll out your puff pastry quite thinly and cut it into rectangular strips, about 10cm by 20cm. Spread a thin layer of stewed apples along the length of the pastry strip, keeping to one half and therefore leaving a few centimetres of exposed pastry all the way along.
On top of the layer of stewed apples, place half-circles of chorizo (snip your slices in half with scissors); slightly overlapping is fine, and with the tip of the half-circles overshooting the edge of the pastry, like rose petals.
Brush some beaten egg over the exposed side of the pastry and fold it over the chorizo slices, brushing again with egg. Roll the strip up like a cinnamon swirl, and pop in a well-greased muffin tray to bake for about 15 minutes.
‘Rose’ really is a loose term, especially because, once in the oven, puff pastry has a mind of its own and can puff up in all the wrong places, but they’re great fun for kids to make and adults to eat. Win-win.
