Apple Blessing Time

And now a word about apples, the last great crop of the harvest season. This is the time to really exult in them, for apples that hung on through a nip of frost are crisper, tastier, last longer and make the best cider. In short, these are the keepers.

Now is also the time to get your hands on as many as you can at farmers' markets because they are where you will find great varieties that never appear on supermarket shelving. Industrial agriculture and its partner, big box supermarkets, only offer the same half dozen apples--Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji, Braeburn, and sometimes even Macintosh--and crossbred varieties of them. They're only raison d'etre in this spotlight is not taste or texture, but simply that they can withstand mechanical harvesting, conveyor belt handling, long distance rumbling and photography, which is to say that after all that, they make a flawless appearance. Frankly, there is nothing else to recommend that mushy, four-bump travesty, the so-called "delicious" apple.

At farmers' markets, you find dozens of tasty alternatives, although some might not be "lookers." For starters, if you are lucky because they are becoming a rarer and rarer treasure, you''ll come upon the Mercedes of eating apples: the tangy, crunchy, sweet tart Winesap. Frankly, if the Wicked Witch had held one out to me, I'd have taken a bite faster than Snow White. Northern Spies are the original New England pie apple, and if you don't want to make that pie until after Thanksgiving, they'll still be good. Mutsu apples are a tastier, crunchier spin-off of Yellow Delicious that will keep a lot longer for the lunchbox. Macouns are Macs on steroids, Baldwins are a very old fashioned, long lived, sweet eating apple, and Cortlands are famous because they're the one apple that doesn't immediately turn brown when its flesh is exposed to air.

Apples are right up there with strawberries and bananas as America'a favorite fruit, but they got to the top with much more publicity. We brag about its nutritional boost by insisting: "An apple a day keeps the Doctor away." We reveal its allure when we offer an apple for the teacher, or call someone an "apple polisher." In The Bible, human civilization starts with the bite of an apple and in fairy tales, Snow White's sexual awakening does too.
Fruit has always been the perfect metaphor for our human desires because it comes to us literally ripe for the taking-- we don't have to do anything but enjoy it, and the apple has become our culture's prime symbol.

This may partly have come to pass because the apple was one of the few fruits that could be grown in England. (It is native to the Caucasus, not Great Britain.) Thus the Victorian botanists and plant hunters who fanned out over the planet in the 19th Century were all too myopically apt to name strange fruits after their beloved and familiar apple: the southeast Asian rose apple and custard apple, the Bengali fruit they called "wood apple", the tropical Pacific island fruit they called "pineapple." It's doubtful that what Eve supposedly tempted Adam with was what we call an apple, because these are not hot weather, Mediterranean fruits; betting is on a pomegranate or perhaps a quince.

We all know about being as American as apple pie--which was actually brought here by British colonists, and about Johnny Appleseed planting all those trees. But as others have revealed, he wasn't thinking of pie. Earlier Americans who wanted some sweetness in their hardscrabble lives wanted apples with their high sugar content not to eat but to ferment into vinegar and drinking alcohol: hard cider and apple brandy. The large glossy picture perfect eating apple is the product of modern manufacture.

Still, a good apple pie is a great dessert. It can be made with cranberries or raisins thrown in, even chopped walnuts too. It can be made open faced like a charlotte or open upside down like a tarte tatin. It can be made now and frozen for February.

Another great dessert, or even breakfast, is the baked apple: if you can find the large, round Rome or Empire or Cortland, grab a few, core and stuff them with a mix of raisins, cranberries, chopped nuts, cinnamon, freshly grated ginger, lemon zest and maple syrup. Put them in a baking pan and pour about 1/2 cup apple cider and 1 tbsp lemon juice over them, cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake at 350 about an hour or until the apples are fork tender. Serve plain warm or later with ice cream, whipped cream or thick yogurt. This is as nutritious as it is delicious, a great way to wean kids from cakes.

Try chopping two tart apples like Macoun or Northern Spy into the batter of Indian pudding just before you bake it. This can gussy the traditional dish up for Thanksgiving dinner. Or be really old-fashioned and cook a dozen apples in some apple cider and lemon juice with a cinnamon stick thrown in, until they're soft and mushy. Then push them through a food mill or strainer into apple sauce, which you can either eat right away or freeze to enjoy in March. When I was a kid I was always dazzled that my great aunt's great apple sauce had the charming blush of pink. Years later I found out her secret was simply to leave the skins on during cooking and when she put the apples into her Foley food mill.

If you are not vegetarian, you can chop up a tart apple or two, combine it with cranberries and prunes and roast a pork loin in the mix. It will be juicy. But, of course, all of this cooking depends on not eating up all the apples just as they are in their glorious natural state.