On Friday, my good neighbors leave a half bushel of these odd looking apples on my doorstep. No idea what variety they are, but they are blemished, warty and have that weird russeting (potato skin) around the stem. But, they taste awesome and are very crisp. Nice balance of tart and sweet. So.... I get busy making them into, you know, stuff. Figuring that I can use up the rest of these damn green Brandywine tomatoes at the same time (not one of these little turds ripened this season), I find recipes for a green tomato chutney and a pork and green tomato stew which, I figure, would taste better with the addition of some of this apple. But now, I dont have enough green tomatoes. Paging Paula Page! Paula hooks me up with enough Brandywine green tomatoes (she had the same problem) to finish the chutney (which tastes great). She also gave me a jar of homemade watermelon rind pickles, because she rocks her kitchen as hard as I do. I still have a little overrun on the ice cream filling up my freezer, so I make a couple deliveries to neighbors on my street. Neighbor Mike is so happy with the ice cream, he hands me a frozen package of porterhouse steak, 2 lbs of steak tips and 2 lbs of hamburger. Im cool with that.... Tonight I take a few lbs of the apples to make homemade applesauce, add a touch of white wine, golden raisins and diced Danjou pears. The apples get weird in the pan... they puff up and immediately reduce to a custard-like thickness with very little graininess. . Ive never seen apples do that. I do a little research on the apples and it turns out that they are an heirloom variety called Newtown Pippin. (see photo of the gravity defying applesauce). Lastly, I made a pork and green tomato stew with a little bit of the apple, white wine, sage, marjoram, chicken broth, onion, garlic. So good. At the end of some very productive work in the kitchen, I can only look to my friends and neighbors and say Thank YOU.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 01:36:27 +0000