The easy part of apple picking is the picking. The hard part is figuring out what to do with the apples. It’s the apple picking phenomenon — what appears like a small bagful in the orchard morphs into an overwhelming number once you get home, and the question becomes, “Wait, did someone add apples to my bag? Did we really pick this many??”
The key is to skip those recipes that call for one, two, three apples. The pile’s not going to get whittled down that way. Nope, you need recipes that require lots of apples.
Like the Peter Brady classic, pork chops and applesauce.
Homemade, warm applesauce tastes 100 times better than anything from a jar. This is from Gourmet — I’ll skip the pork chop part, but you can find the recipe here. Here’s all you need for the applesauce:
3 lbs Macintosh and Gala apples (around 9-10 medium apples)
1/4 water
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp allspice
It’s really simple — all you have to do is peel and chop the apples, and add them in a pot with the rest of the ingredients.
Bring it to a simmer, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for about 15-20 minutes — stirring every few minutes until the apples are falling apart.
Remove the bay leaf and mash those apples up. I like to add about a tsp of cinnamon and keep the applesauce on the chunky side.
And there you go, pork chops and applesauce.
I’ll make a few batches of applesauce, freeze it, and then whenever I want some, defrost and reheat it.
I was also poking around my The Newlywed Cookbook by Robin Vitetta-Miller. (Got it at work several years ago, but you don’t have to be a newlywed to use it.)
There’s a recipe for apple strudel in it that I suppose would be classified as a “Sandra Lee”; it’s semi-homemade, using packaged puff pastry.
1 puff pastry sheet, thawed
4 apples, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 tbsp water
First step was to combine the apples, sugar (I used less than 1/2 cup), cinnamon and vanilla.
I rolled the puff pastry into a 12″ x 15″ rectangle, and layered the apples on top, to within 1/2 inch of the edges.
Then came the tricky part: rolling it up like a jellyroll. A few apples were spilling out the sides and it wasn’t the prettiest thing, but it survived.
I put the roll seam-side down on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray, whisked together the egg and water, and brushed on the egg wash, before making several slits along the top.
Into a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes, until nice and golden brown.
A flaky crust and warm, fresh apples. The only thing missing was ice cream!
So that takes care of the majority of the apples. I’ve also been eating two apples a day.
Does that keep the doctor twice as far away?
Peter Brady Food and Apple Strudel
The easy part of apple picking is the picking. The hard part is figuring out what to do with the apples. It’s the apple picking phenomenon — what appears like a small bagful in the orchard morphs into an overwhelming number once you get home, and the question becomes, “Wait, did someone add apples to my bag? Did we really pick this many??”
The key is to skip those recipes that call for one, two, three apples. The pile’s not going to get whittled down that way. Nope, you need recipes that require lots of apples.
Like the Peter Brady classic, pork chops and applesauce.
Homemade, warm applesauce tastes 100 times better than anything from a jar. This is from Gourmet — I’ll skip the pork chop part, but you can find the recipe here. Here’s all you need for the applesauce:
3 lbs Macintosh and Gala apples (around 9-10 medium apples)
1/4 water
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp allspice
It’s really simple — all you have to do is peel and chop the apples, and add them in a pot with the rest of the ingredients.
Bring it to a simmer, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for about 15-20 minutes — stirring every few minutes until the apples are falling apart.
Remove the bay leaf and mash those apples up. I like to add about a tsp of cinnamon and keep the applesauce on the chunky side.
And there you go, pork chops and applesauce.
I’ll make a few batches of applesauce, freeze it, and then whenever I want some, defrost and reheat it.
I was also poking around my The Newlywed Cookbook by Robin Vitetta-Miller. (Got it at work several years ago, but you don’t have to be a newlywed to use it.)
There’s a recipe for apple strudel in it that I suppose would be classified as a “Sandra Lee”; it’s semi-homemade, using packaged puff pastry.
1 puff pastry sheet, thawed
4 apples, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 tbsp water
First step was to combine the apples, sugar (I used less than 1/2 cup), cinnamon and vanilla.
I rolled the puff pastry into a 12″ x 15″ rectangle, and layered the apples on top, to within 1/2 inch of the edges.
Then came the tricky part: rolling it up like a jellyroll. A few apples were spilling out the sides and it wasn’t the prettiest thing, but it survived.
I put the roll seam-side down on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray, whisked together the egg and water, and brushed on the egg wash, before making several slits along the top.
Into a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes, until nice and golden brown.
A flaky crust and warm, fresh apples. The only thing missing was ice cream!
So that takes care of the majority of the apples. I’ve also been eating two apples a day.
Does that keep the doctor twice as far away?