The Orchard Cottage apples are finally ripe enough for picking. I’m overwhelmed by the bounty, and couldn’t resist picking as many as I could fit into my garden geek basket (courtesy of Tim, who is ace at picking out birthday presents).
I decided to turn the glut into applesauce, one of my favorite things to make now that I have a food mill. No peeling or coring required! And as Claire points out on Food Junta, applesauce is a great way to turn otherwise sub-par apples into something spectacular. Not that our orchard apples are sub-par – they are the best apples in the world, albeit a little tart yet (a good excuse to make crumble and pie).
Here is the recipe I use for applesauce, courtesy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
Applesauce
salt
Fill your biggest pot with about 1/2 inch of water and a generous pinch of salt.
Halve or quarter the apples and put them in the pot.
Cover the pot and bring it to a boil. Uncover, turn down heat to medium, and let simmer, stirring/mashing occasionally, until apples reach desired consistency. This should take about half an hour.
Let it cool down a bit until its cool enough to handle. Put the whole lot through a food mill. Eat some now, store the rest in the freezer.
[…] then I realized that in my hurry, instead of mixing the filling with gravy, I’d mixed it with the applesauce I’d made wth the last of the bag of utility apples from the orchard up the […]