Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category

Apple: Charoset – Jewish Apple Dried Fruit Nut Salad

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Apples are not only tasty and good for you, over the thousands of years that they’ve been around, they’ve grown to have cultural and religious significance.

For instance, this Jewish apple salad – charoset is eaten during the Jewish Pesach (Passover) festival. Charoset is also spelled “charosset,” “charosses” or “haroset”  and pronounced ha-ROH-ses or ha-ROH-set.

Depending on the provenance, the salad ingredients and texture will vary.

In the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) version, ingredients traditionally include apples, nuts, cinnamon, sweet red wine and honey – in a finely chopped salad spread over matzos. For the Sephardim (Mediterranean), the salad generally includes dates, other dried fruit, and spices like ginger – pureed into a paste and sometimes rolled into sticky balls eaten with sweetmeat throughout the holiday.

Charoset recipes are typically family recipes that also reflect an ethnic influence. Some recipes add bananas, pine nuts, chiles, cilantro or other local ingredients.

However, whether the salad is finely chopped or paste-like – it symbolically represents the mortar used by Hebrew slaves to build ancient Egypt and the salad is one of six items on the Sedar Plate along with bitter herbs.

Since I’m not Jewish, I’m inclined to eat this salad throughout the fall and winter months, when apples are at their peak and dried fruit is abundant. This version is more tart than sweet, made sweeter with the sweet red wine. However, I think the salad would also be lovely using olive oil in lieu of sweet wine and adding some fresh parsley and cilantro for a more savory salad. Or, I may make it simply using orange or apple juice and eat the leftovers in my oatmeal.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about apple salads or your family’s charoset version.

Tidbits on Apples:

  1. There are over 7,500 known varieties of apples.
  2. In some cultures, an apple is a symbol of immortality, love or sexuality. For example, throwing an apple at a person’s bed was an invitation for something racier than apple pie in ancient Greece.
  3. Some folklore credits apples with increasing a woman’s chances of conception.
  4. Apples have also been rubbed on skin to remove birthmarks.
  5. The proverb an apple a day keeps the doctor away, has some truth to it primarily because it helps aid digestion.

(more…)

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Apple: Moroccan Chicken Apple Stew

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

savory chicken apple stew tajine

Are you like the majority of Americans who only eat apples as a raw snack or in sweet dishes? If yes, you’re not alone – only a few years ago, I was the same.

More recently, I’ve taken cue from other cultures that use apples in savory dishes, much like one would use a potato – apples add a tart and sweet dimension to soups, stews and salads.

Last fall, I wrote about the Moroccan and North African cookery and how they use fruit such as apples, pears, quinces, apricots and raisins for savory dishes. This chicken and apple tagine is a twist of the Moroccan Lamb and Pear Tagine I posted. Of course, you could easily substitute pears or use both.

Although I still haven’t bought a tagine (the cooking vessel), this dish is a tagine – a reference to the rich Moroccan stew. The chicken version has more veggies (carrots, zucchini, and potatoes) and garbanzo beans. This is pure comfort food, especially when paired with couscous.

October is national apple month – so try apples in a savory dish. What’s your favorite non-sweet apple dish?

Tidbits on Apples:

  1. In 2004, U.S. per capita total apple consumption was 50.4 pounds per person, according to the U.S. Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. For fresh fruit, Americans eat 18.6 pounds of apples per person, second to bananas.
  2. The high pectin and malic acid in raw apples are good for digestion and elimination. Leave the skin on for extra nutritional benefits. The flavonoids found in apples are believed to help prevent cancer.
  3. The acid content of apples makes them a natural breath freshener.

(more…)

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Apple: Apple Crisp with Oats

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

Apple Crisp Crumble - British American

It’s apple season. It, like the turning of green leaves to golden and crimson hues, is a symbol of fall. In my house and elsewhere, that means it’s time for apple crisp.

I’m more partial to crisps, crumbles and crunches than pies and tarts – not only to make but to eat. I prefer less fuss – sprinkling a quick topping over raw fruit, rather than rolling and pinching dough, and worrying about an undercooked, soggy bottom crust.

A crisp contains flour, butter and sugar that is roughly mixed and scattered atop of fruit. It’s an American adaptation of the British crumble, which some food historians say was developed there around World War II, when food rations called for a sweet alternative to the beloved apple pie they’d been eating since the fifteenth century.

However, other food history authorities suggest that apple crisp and other non-pie variations such as cobbler were introduced in the nineteenth century by the English. Notably, the earliest print reference to apple crisp in American recipes was in 1924 in “Everybody’s Cook Book: A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery” by Isabel Ely Lord.

Regardless of its origins, apple crisp is a fall tradition and a good apple crisp is balanced in flavor and texture. Flavor – tart apples and a crisp that’s not overly sweet. Texture – a tender juicy apple filling and a chewy, crisp topping.

In the last few weeks, I’ve already made three apple crisps – the apples always vary but not the crisp.

The apples I use depend on what’s available – Jonathan, Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Braeburn, and other tart varieties. My best crisp is a mix of apples, using some apples to hold shape and others that will melt to make a sweet, juicy filling.

This crisp is my go-to recipe for any fruit-based crisp. I adapted it many years ago from the Plum and Peach Crisp recipe at 101 Cookbooks. It calls for yogurt in lieu of some of the butter. It’s fantastic because the yogurt adds a bit of tanginess to the already tart and sweet (not overly sweet) dessert. My adaptation also calls for fresh cardamom, one of my favorite comforting spices.

Enjoy! I’m interested in hearing about which apple varieties are your favorite for baked desserts.

Tidbits on Apples:

  1. The large sweet apples that we recognize today descend from wild crabapples from the region of Caucasus in west Asia.
  2. Apples arrived in the New World with European settlers. The first documented orchard in the U.S. was planted in 1625 in Boston.
  3. Choose your apples by what you decide to do with it – eating raw versus baking. Select ones that are firm and bruise-free. The “undercast” (the background color) of ripe apples is generally a dull yellow or dull green. For example a light green Granny Smith is ripe, while a very green Granny Smith is under-ripe. Under-ripe apples will ripen quickly when left out at room temperature.
  4. Store apples in the refrigerator drawer to delay additional ripening. The optimum temperature for apple storage (depending on variety) is between 32 and 40 degrees.

(more…)

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