Читать книгу The New English Table: 200 Recipes from the Queen of Thrifty, Inventive Cooking - Rose Prince - Страница 11
ОглавлениеApple, Red Cabbage and Watercress Salad
An apple is often the earliest of our food memories. From the moment an infant takes its first carefully sieved apple purée, to the apple in the lunchbox or the one pinched from a tree in next door’s garden, apples are always close by. For busy students and workers, they are a constant – reliable pocket fodder or desktop picnic regular. Apple turnovers and doughnuts are just another, naughtier, form of the fruit. Then young families make their first apple crumble, and over time come apple snow, pies, tarts and charlottes. Non-pudding eaters never tire of apples with cheese. Then after this lifetime with a fruit that is a symbol of the heart, some of us will face the end with the occasional bowl of apple purée again. I hope I do, teeth or no teeth.
Apples are an emblem of what is wrong and what is right about our food supply. There are thousands of varieties but only a handful of them are grown commercially – a monoculture that squanders custom and harms the environment. But this dent in diversity is now – slowly – reversing, with apple farmers bringing traditional varieties to city markets and even supermarkets putting a few unfamiliar apples on their shelves. There has been a revival of apple customs, community orchards and ‘Apple Days’, when children can taste some odd things made with apples and adults get squiffy on farmhouse cider. Yet Britain grows a shamefully small crop. It was once enormous, but the creation of a free market with other European countries in the 1970s saw British farmers chop down every tree, grub them up and plant a more valuable crop. Did they know at the time that to destroy an orchard is to terminate the survival of a menagerie of wildlife, including the vital wild bee population? They do now, and so does Defra (the Department of Food and Rural Affairs), which is offering incentives to farmers planting orchards. So there’s hope – a long way still to go, but I feel optimistic.
Sold in every greengrocer’s, every paper shop, everywhere, apples have become an everyday thing to take for granted – eating one is like brushing your teeth or taking a bus. Like it or not. I like it when the home crop is in season and varieties jig in and out of the autumn and winter months, but not when the stickers on the fruit show that it has travelled long haul even though our own are in season. I’d rather feel the rough skin of a Russet on my lip and taste its firm, mellow flesh than have my face sprayed with the acidic juice of an import that has been bred for looks but not taste. I am happy not to eat peaches in late summer, preferring to wait for those anonymous native apples that drop off local trees, whose red skin stains their white insides pink. That’s what I call exotic.
But why are English apples just that bit better? Here is a fruit that, unlike tomatoes, likes its adopted country. The chemistry between the apple tree, our climate and our soil yields a fruit that has intricate melodies of taste and texture. Commercially grown French apples have tarty PVC skin and astringent flesh; our ordinary Cox’s, on the other hand, are dressed for the weather, with sturdy, windcheater hides holding in their mellow juices.
Perhaps we should rethink when to eat apples. For almost ten months of the year, from late July to early May, there is the home-grown supply: the Pippins, Pearmains, Russets and other esoteric types. There are even free apples if you can get at some windfalls. You don’t have to own a tree, but good contacts help. My mother-in-law brings us hers when she visits us in town. Fallen apples are not always the best to eat in the hand, having been bashed about a bit, but they cook well.
Buying apples
For the interesting ones, visit your local farmers’ market and buy lots. Store them in the dark, where they will keep well, then it won’t be the end of the world if the weekly market trip cannot be made. To find a farmers’ market, look at your local council website. London markets can be located at www.lfm.org.uk. There are other independently run produce markets, such as Borough Market in southeast London, and you will sometimes find locally grown apples in ordinary street markets across the country. Look out also for country markets, run by the WI – your nearest can be located on www.country-markets.co.uk.
A novel way to buy apples is by post. Try Charlton Orchards (www.charltonorchards.com; tel: 01823 412959). For information about starting or locating community orchards, or learning about apple varieties and customs, contact the Dorset-based organisation, Common Ground (www.commonground.org.uk).
Which apple to use
The season for British apples runs from July to May. Early varieties ripen on the tree and do not store well, then the later ones start to come in. Some of these can be eaten immediately, but others need time in storage for the sugars to develop. Sometimes this can take months, hence the long apple season. Cox’s, for example, are picked in late September but are not ripe until late October. Modern storage facilities have also lengthened the season. There are a few varieties that are specifically for cooking (like the Bramley) but the truth is that you can cook with any eating apple. It is best, though, to cook them when they are still a little unripe, so the flavour will be stronger.
Good apples tend to be very good on the inside but a little knobbly in looks. They may have rough bumps, come in odd shapes or have some pest damage but, providing the flesh is not bruised or discoloured and the juice is sweet, this will not affect the way they cook.
Familiar native apples
Bramley The prototypical cooking apple, tart and firm, but not the one with the most interesting taste. Bramleys have a thick skin, normally pared away for cooking, and a flesh that cooks to a pale and puffy soft purée. They always need sweetening and are traditionally used in pies and crumbles. I prefer to bake smaller dessert apples, but a baked Bramley with its foaming hot flesh is something of a classic.
Cox’s Orange Pippin An eating apple (that can also be cooked) with a mellow, yellow-tinted flesh and a slightly rough, red-and green-tinted skin. British commercial growers like to grow Cox’s because they last until March in storage. They are a good apple, sweet enough to cook without sugar yet they work well with savoury things, too (see Bacon and Apples). When shopping, look out for their Pippin relatives for new aromas, colours and flavours.
Egremont Russet Their smallness makes these eating apples irritating to prepare for cooking but, used slightly underripe, they have a beautiful sharpness and can hold their shape. I put them in tarts, and make an ice with a jelly prepared from whole Russets. They are ideal for the soup. They ripen in late October and there is a good supply until December.
Discovery My favourite apple to eat raw. The pink from the skin tints the flesh and they have a knockout scent. Use in salads with toasted pumpkin seeds and fruity cheeses like Cheddar, or cook them with blackberries. They ripen on the tree in July/August and must be eaten quickly.
Worcester Pearmain This is the classic bright-red striped English eating apple, available in winter (but rarely after Christmas). The juice is sharp and fragrant. The colour fades when cooked, so Worcesters are better eaten raw. Use them in salads, with walnuts and blue cheese.
Unfamiliar native apples
Blenheim Orange These eating apples are often mentioned in old cookery books as excellent cooking apples, too. They cook down to a drier, more textured purée than regular cooking apples and are thought to be ideal for charlottes (a fruit pudding baked in a straight-sided dish lined with buttered bread, then turned out to serve).
Newton Wonder A sweet cooking apple that ripens in late December and is available through January. Remove the core, stuff the cavity with dried figs and treacle, then bake in a low oven and eat with good vanilla ice cream.
Laxton’s Fortune An early eating apple with Pippin ancestors, this ripens in September and should be eaten quickly, raw.
Tydeman’s Late Orange A dry-skinned Russet with plenty of aromatic juice, this eating apple ripens in January. Core it, stuff the cavity with raisins, wrap in shortcrust pastry, then brush with egg and bake. Eat with custard or sweetened cream cheese.
Scarlet Pimpernel An adorable small, fragrant apple that ripens in August. Fry them in a pan, sprinkle with brown sugar and serve with barbecued pork chops. Or eat raw, with cobnuts.
Ashmead’s Kernel An eating apple that doubles as a cider apple, with yellow, firm-textured flesh that keeps well. Good for making Apple Soup, or peel, core and braise with duck and haricot beans for a sweet, winter dish.
Crab apple The parent species of every apple, crab apples are always sour, very fragrant and have a nice habit of turning rusty pink when cooked. The best possible use for them is to make a syrup or jelly. Put the quartered apples in a pan with some water and simmer until soft. Suspend a muslin jelly bag over a chair, place a bowl beneath and tip the cooked apples into the bag. Do not force it; let the juice drip through naturally. Measure the juice, add 500g/1lb 2oz granulated sugar for every 600ml/1 pint liquid, boil for about 15 minutes then put into jars. It will set into a delicate pink jelly.
Breakfast apple There isn’t any such species but I use this as a catch-all word for apples I cannot identify. I peel and core them and then cook them to a soft purée. This is my regular breakfast, which I eat with honey, yoghurt and linseed.
