An Apple a Day

Strangely enough, I don’t run to ice cream in warm weather. Warm weather makes me crave granitas, puddings and all sorts of fruit, but for me ice cream’s role is to support greater dessert themes. Sometimes it obeys a rich harmony with a chocolate soufflee, or maybe it balances the temperature of warm poached rhubarb, or cuts the acidity of citrus. Sometimes, it can even do all three.

Apples are quite possibly my favorite thing that grows on a tree. While it’s true that I’ve never gotten completely covered in apple juice while enjoying fruit after fruit before/during/after frenzied lovemaking under an apple tree (as I may or may not have done with peaches), apples- great apples I mean, not supermarket apples – are sweet, crunchy, tart, spicy, rich and acidic all at once. They practically throw themselves into cider, pies, ice cream, ices and being eaten just like they are. Unlike most other tree fruit (with the notable exception of pear), they also last a long time, right there in a bowl on the counter, and even (though you didn’t hear this from me) in the refrigerator. When they start getting a little soft here and there, though, there’s no better way to hide their little flaws than to bake them. And really, why the hell does ice cream even exist if not to go with baked apples?

**Baked Apples with Autumn Ice Cream**

For Six:

*These quantities are mere suggestions. Like all things in cooking, they depend on taste and what is available.*

½ cup raisins
2 tbsn dark rum, like Myer’s or Whaler’s

6 baking apples: jonagold, jonathon, Northern spy, empire or even- if you must- golden delicious
4 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
12 whole cloves
½ cup dark rum, like Myer’s or Whaler’s
½ stick butter, plus more for parchment
1/2 valencia or morro orange, zested and juiced (don’t use navel)
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg (or ½ tsp if not fresh)
½ cup dark brown sugar
sprinkling of salt

Clove Ice Cream (below)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the raisins in a heatproof bowl, add the 2 tbsn run and cover completely with boiling water. Allow to sit for 30 minutes.

Pare the apples as follows: Using a sharp paring knife, use your thumb as a pivot point against the stem of the apples. Cut a circle out of the center of each apple so that a little conical hat is formed with the stem still attached. Set these hats aside and peel and core the apples completely. Take a small slice off of the bottom of each so that they will sit flat, if necessary.

Set the apples in a heavy ceramic or enamelware dish large enough so that they aren’t touching. Put half a cinnamon stick in the cavity of each cored apple, scatter the remaining halves around the pan. Stab two cloves into the top of each apple. Smear a pat of butter on top of each apples and strew the rest of it around the pan. Grate or scatter the zest of the orange over the apples, then pour over the juice and rum. Sprinkle with ginger, allspice and nutmeg, brown sugar and salt. Put the hats back on the apples and into the oven for 20 minutes.

Scatter the raisins over the apples and cover with buttered parchment paper. Bake for another 30-40 minutes, until apples are tender and sauce is thickened.

Allow to cool slightly before serving with ice cream.

**Clove ice cream**
*I sometimes call this “Autumn Ice Cream” and tell people it’s made out of dried leaves. Sometimes they believe me.*

*It isn’t essential to use eucalyptus honey in this ice cream. In fact you could use any honey or agave or sugar or stevia in it with great results, but the very very faint taste of this particular honey adds something exotic to the mix.*

4 cups heavy cream
24 cloves
½ cinnamon stick
2 allspice berries
5 egg yolks
1/4 cup mild-flavored honey, like clover or thyme
1/3 cup eucalyptus honey

Scald the cream with the spices in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Scalding means heating to just below the boiling point where the fats would coagulate and your day would just not be as nice (about 190 degrees). I once heard an old Italian guy describe this as “Boil the meelk, well, no boil, but get in like a boil position.”

Once your cream is in a boil position, take it off the heat and allow it to steep for 1 hour or more, until you like the taste of it.

Beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Add some of the warmed cream and stir it in quickly. Add the honey and egg yolk mixture to the cream pot, and stir it in well. This is called a liaison (exciting, no?) and prevents the yolks from scrambling. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, over hot water or medium-low heat for about ten minutes, until the consistency of a very light custard sauce is reached (it thoroughly coats a spoon). Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the pot as the mixture cooks. There is also a smell associated with a ready custard… but I’m at a loss as to how to explain it. Keep your nose out for it, and you’ll know for next time. Cooking is more than a recipe, after all.

Pour the mixture into a bowl set in a larger bowl of ice and water. Stir occasionally until cool to the touch, then strain it- pressing on the solids to milk out that sweet spicy tea you’ve made- and put it in the refrigerator. Chill for several hours, or overnight.

Put the custard in the freezer while you dig out the ice cream machine. After about ten minutes, process the custard in the ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Freeze the ice cream until firm, then get it to the apples. They need each other.

Listening: Battlefield Band “Lord Lovat’s Lament”

Pumpkin Raviol

Jesus H Tapdancing Christ, I love apple cider. Apple cider, Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as saying, is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy. Ok, that’s beer, but really, I think I like hard cider better than beer anyhow. There is six pounds of swiss chard and four of lacinato kale in the fridge going bad because I have been working my nads off in the world of home improvement, and next week will be equally daunting in the interminable and often disappointing world of work.

But that’s ok, the pumpkin ravioli are ready, there are 5 dozen in the freezer. I didn’t take any pictures, like a dumbass, but I’ll walk you through the basics. Special thanks to Billy for making the rest of the ravioli while I cleaned up the kitchen.

The dough: Pasta is predicated on the formula of one egg, or 1/4 cup of water, per 1/2-2/3 cup of flour. Most people add salt, and some olive oil, although what oil contributes I have never been able to ascertain. Water can be a matter of economy- although that economy can become tradition- or a matter of gluten development. Ravioli like a stronger dough, unreachable when using high-protein eggs as a liquid source. I have seen ravioli made only with water, a tricky proposition, since, unlike bread dough, there are no yeast and rising forgiving anything left behind in the initial mixing. Want to know the truth? It’s a matter of taste. I think the egg pasta matches the richness of the pumpkin filling, so I use all eggs for this particular recipe. I have also seen ravioli made with dough whose only liquid was **yolks**. Once you have a little practice, you can make whatever you want. Starting with a mixture of eggs and water is probably a good idea. For 6 dozen ravioli, let’s say 4 cups (20 oz) flour, 4 eggs, ½ cup water and 1 teaspoon salt. Let me caution you here, again, not to add all the flour at once. Hold back ½-3/4 cup, it is much easier to knead in flour than to add water. If you’re making it by hand, which I recommend for your first five or six times, start with the flour in a mound (in a bowl, if you’re skittish) and make a deep indentation or “well” in the top. In small bowl, beat the eggs, salt and water together and pour into the well. With a fork or your fingers, stir in flour from the walls of the well, making a thicker and thicker paste until all the flour is incorporated. When dough is a more or less a cohesive mass, it should be dry to the touch. If it feels very wet, continue to knead in the remaining flour as needed. Knead until the dough becomes smooth, homogenous and elastic, about 10 or 15 minutes. Wrap in plastic and rest for at least thirty minutes in the fridge, until an indention in the dough doesn’t bounce back.

The filling: Anything used to fill pasta should be drained. I don’t care if you’re using peanut butter, there’s water in there you don’t need. Pumpkin is bad, but other squashes are even worse. I already gave you the recipe.

The technique: Cut your dough into 6 equal pieces; use a scale if you’re paranoid. Work with one piece at a time, keeping the others covered with a plastic wrap or towels. This is a great application for a pasta machine, where you’ll want to end up with a 5” x 30” rectangle. If you’re doing it by hand, use twice as much dough to make a 10×30 rectangle, and cut it in half to follow these directions. This piece of dough is going to make 12 ravioli, so scoop packed tablespoonfuls of filling 2-1/2 inches apart along the long side of the dough, 1” from the edge. Brush the surface of dough not covered by filling (including in between) LIGHTLY with water and fold the dough in half over itself, so you end up with 12 still-connected ravioli in a row. Press down along folded edge, up to the filling; then press in between ravioli. Finally, push any air out of the ravioli through the last open seam, then seal that seam. Cut the ravioli apart with a round cutter, pastry wheel or, my grandmother’s fave, a juice glass. Usually I do them square because I like the extra pasta while I’m eating them. Also, they’re faster and generate less waste than round varieties (though you can salvage enough waste for a small serving of fettucine when you’re done).

Now comes the fun part: the first time you do this, they’re going to stick to the table, no matter how much flour you’ve put on them. Loosen them with something THIN and METAL, like a bench scraper, icing spatula or even a butter knife. You could also work a piece of dental floss underneath them, but be careful not to tear them.

Obviously, this all assumes you’ve worked with pasta dough before, or at least some kind of dough. Don’t be skittish with the flour your first time. You can freeze them flat on cookie sheets lined with floured towels, once they’re solid you can put them in bags.

Listening: Watching a Law & Order rerun

We Survived

We survived. We’ve eaten more since Friday than we have in the last year, but we survived. Every pan, every bowl, every dish¹ and every appliance except the ice cream maker- all of which has been in boxes for over a year- has been used. Looking at the overflowing dish drainer last night, and the nut bowls littering the butcher block with little bits of this and that, it was like a battlefield; silent after the carnage.

I’ll start with the last meal first. I tried to balance my love of Autumn with the schizophrenic weather we’ve been having, and, therefore, came up with- climactically speaking- a more or less schizophrenic menu. Here it is:

1. Toasted Almonds, Pomegranates
2. Autumn Sorrel Soup (Vegetarian)
3. Gemelli with Pesto
4. Poached Chicken with Vegetables
5. Mixed Salad with Boucheron and Frostberries
6. Apple Raisin Pie

The toasted almonds came out of an [article from Food and Wine from 1997]( http://foodandwine.com/recipes/skillet-toasted-almonds). In the same article, there were other great do-ahead hors d’oeuvres like garlic shrimp and green olive tapenade; it was actually a fantastic piece. Anyway, I hadn’t made them for a long time, and they’re kind of a tradition with one of the guests we had, so they made the list, and it’s the time of year for pomegranates, and The Agent loves them. I only had one fruit, so I seeded it completely, but a cool way to get people involved in their aperitif is to put out wedges of pomegranates with glasses of ice-cold dry vermouth. They pick them apart and sip the aromatic vermouth; it’s a fun way to kill time until the soup is hot.

The sorrel soup was kind of an experiment. The Agent lives for sorrel, and most nights in the spring we have it either by itself or with arugula in a salad. I had never seen Autumn sorrel before but they had it at Gorzynski’s stand on Saturday, and Mrs G explained that it grows again when the weather gets milder. I imagine they might have it again next Saturday, since it’s hardly been cold. Regardless, we were left with several cups of sorrel on the brink of being less than perfect (it goes quickly) but since I have been trying to accommodate The Agent’s vegetarian brother as much as possible, my standard recipe was out. This led to a vegetarian “broth” being made with an *onion pique*² and a thick slice of ginger, then adding the sorrel (which wilts and browns instantly) and pureeing. While hot it had a bizarre taste, almost reminiscent of saffron, but with cream and chilling it mellowed to a sorrel-esque soup. I have to say, in retrospect, I feel that the vegetable, when cooked, benefits enormously from the richness of stock. Not a triumph, but it was fine, and we drank it out of cups which I feel is the ultimate whimsy in *potagerie*.

Sorrel, in case you live in a cave, is a wonderful green available in the spring and fall that is bright green, shaped like a cross between arugula and spinach and it tastes of lemon and sour strawberries. It’s very perishable and turns brown when heated, although the green comes back with a white background, like milk or cream. It is fantastic in salads, especially with arugula where they work together with a sort of lemon-pepper counterpoint.

I’ve been eating a lot of pasta lately, and last night was no exception. We had *gemelli*, twins, interlocking corkscrews of hollow pasta, dressed with old-school pesto, from Lidia Bastianich’s Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, an excellent book that both notes the difference of and celebrates the food that evolved in this country from the traditional foods of Italians in Italy. And by the way, don’t let me hear any of that shit about pesto only being made in a mortar and pestle. If you rough-cut your basil to a uniform size, you avoid the telltale came-from-a-cuisinart look of big leaves floating in your pesto. Next thing you’ll tell me is that fish mousseline can only be made with a drum sifter.

The poached chicken [I’ve been through already]( http://omnivorousfish.com/node/61), and we served it with traditional appointments, that is to say freshly grated horseradish, mustard, coarse salt, *cornichons* and the good-tasting but untraditional peperoncini in vinegar. In addition to what’s in the recipe linked above, we had turnips, since Bob is allergic to onions. Sounds boring until you have it with a chicken from [Dine’s Farms]( http://www.dinesfarms.net/).

The salad was just mixed fancy lettuces from Fairway with crumbled *boucheron*, a lightly aged goat cheese, a strong mustard vinaigrette and frostberries. Frostberries? What the hell is a frostberry, you ask? It’s also called an [Autumn Olive]( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_olive), *Elaeagnus umbellate*, a plant native to East Asia and Japan, which produced tiny red berries with an edible seed. They’re very astringent, but- according to Greg Swartz from Gorzynski’s Ornery Farm- don’t have as much flavor until after the first frost, thus the name. I use them almost like capers, except sour instead of salty. They’re great sprinkled on a salad, cheese platter or rich pasta dishes like gnocchi, and we haven’t gotten to it yet, but there’s a fantastic cocktail in there somewhere, maybe with [pisco]( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco).

Dessert was basic, apple pie with raisins. The only distinctive things about it were my secret ingredient with apples (orange-blossom water, BUT JUST A DROP) and [Shuna’s fantastic pie dough recipe]( http://eggbeater.typepad.com/shuna/2005/06/pie.html), which can be rolled right away. I will leave you to follow the link to get the recipe and excellently detailed instruction (with photos), but I will say that I use fine salt in pie dough where Shuna uses kosher, because I find the stray crystal that survives in the dough to be unpleasant to bite into. Also, I bake by weight, because I have an electronic scale with a tare that allows me to measure everything into the same bowl. I don’t recommend that for novice bakers, but when you can make an educated guess on volumes³, it is infinitely faster, easier and cleaner to weigh. All of my cookbooks have weights written in the margin. The reason I don’t recommend it at first is because if you put too much in, it is mixed with whatever is already in the bowl, so until you’re comfortable with your ingredients, weigh or measure separately. When I want to convert a recipe to weights, I follow the chart in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s seminal volume, The Cake Bible.
These are the dry weights for the recipe in the above link:

10 oz flour
1-3/4 oz sugar

Shuna also doesn’t list the quantity of water, because that is a dangerous thing to do, but in the three pies I made this week, about ¼ cup was used, however, I cannot warn you enough: YOU SHOULD NEVER ADD ALL THE WATER IN A PIE DOUGH RECIPE AT ONCE. It should be sprinkled in as the dough comes together. It can vary depending on the flour and the time of the year by as much as 200%.

The filling was a mixture of Empire and Macoun apples, both hybrids grown locally, the Empire has big apple flavor and doesn’t give up much water, and the Macoun has what I call “built in spice,” giving a little aromatic hint without the obviousness of adding cinnamon. I added only a tiny amount of sugar- which helps to “juice” the pie- but too much sugar masks the fruit you went all the way to the farmers’ market to get, some flour (maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons, judge by which apples you’re using and how wet they are when you take a bite), a handful of golden raisins plumped in hot water and- literally- a DROP of orange-blossom water. Rosewater is nice, also, and slightly more mellow. I also add a pinch of salt to my apples, since I put salt in everything.

We drank several excellent wines that night, not all of which made it onto the menu. Among them were a Carneros Creek pinot noir and with dessert we had Doc’s Draft Hard Apple Cider, which is made by [Warwick Winery]( http://www.wvwinery.com/), and in addition to being the perfect accompaniment to the pie, is a steal at $5.99 for 650mL (at [Vintage]( http://www.vintagenewyork.com/homepage.html), those scumbags at Whole Foods get another dollar). Go out and get some to drink with your local apples today!

Listening: NPR, sorry I’m boring.

¹ An exaggeration. We have a lot of dishes.
² An onion, peeled, studded with cloves and a bay leaf. I make mine look like this.
Onion Pique

³ For example, I don’t measure or weigh anymore when making pasta, because so much is variable, like the humidity and the age of the eggs. It’s a