Apples to Apples

Dear Mouse,

OK this is totally my third post in a row but A) this gives you more time to prepare The Honeymoon Post (!!) and B) I'll just be a second. Consider this a Breaking (or, Baking) News Flash.

Every once in a while I am lucky enough to discover/assemble/fall into something in the kitchen that sends me literally scurrying to the laptop like one of your kind to share it with the world.

It's the thick of autumn, and that means apples. And if you're lucky: apple picking.

Hard-Won Macouns.

This was a remarkable two-time orchard excursion week for me, with visits to Solebury Orchard in NJ and I-can't-remember-its-name in NY on Sunday and Monday. To pace myself, I decided to leave all the beautiful Solesbury winesaps and topazes with my friends in NJ... and then found myself cursing this restraint while shaking and climbing the nearly-bare NY trees for the paltry few Golden Delicious and Macouns still hanging on. (At least I know I can still climb a little, with the right incentive.) So.. the moral I guess is... gather ye winesaps while ye may.

Synchronized Fujis

I still brought home probably a good five pounds of rosy speckled globes. And the very first thing I made with them is, quite simply, the best apple-related dessert that I, personally, have made...

Rosemary-Apple Crostata. You heard me.

.. and made UP! On the fly!

Ok I am certainly not the first person to think of this flavor melange. However, while it there is nothing new under the sun and it turned out there was already in fact a recipe for 'Rosemary Apple Tart' on the very splendid Splendid Table web site, I didn't yet KNOW that when the thought of rosemary flitted across my brain. So I still feel a kind of proud ownership.

In the end, I conflated two recipes: the Splendid Table Tart with its bewitching rosemary-lemon-rubbed sugar, and the simple, rustic form of the Apple Crostata from Ye Olde Ina Garten. And let me tell you ... it works. Not only does it work, it makes me never want to eat apples baked without rosemary again. It's homey, sweet, classic, appley . It's woodsy, perfumed, autumnal, intoxicating.

And now I just need to do something with the other 4lbs.

Love,

The Boo

The Boo's Rosemary-Lemon Apple Crostata

(with love to Lynn Rossetto Kasper and Ina G.)

CRUST

Ina's recipe sets you up with a crostata's worth of extra dough in your freezer! I rolled it out quite thin and wound up cutting away some of it, which I liked a lot ... but I'm not really a thick-crust kind of girl.

2 C all-purpose flour
1/4 C sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound very cold unsalted butter, diced

1/4 C ice water

Place the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. **Note: I approximated this by hand as I don't have a food processor.** Pulse a few times to combine. Add the butter and pulse 12 to 15 times, or until the butter is the size of peas. With the motor running, add the ice water all at once through the feed tube. Keep hitting the pulse button to combine, but stop the machine just before the dough becomes a solid mass. Turn the dough onto a well-floured board and form into 2 discs. Wrap with plastic and refrigerate one of the discs for at least 1 hour. Freeze the rest.

FILLING

1 lb (ie, 3 med apples or 2 large), peeled, cored, chunked

TOPPING

1/3 C sugar

2 tsp loosely-packed fresh rosemary leaves

zest from about a third of a lemon? Maybe a half, up to you

1 tsp cinnamon

somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 C flour

5 tbsp (a little more than a half a stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

Preheat oven to 450. Roll out crust to an 11 in circle and lay it on a parchment-lined baking sheet or in a sprayed/floured pie pan (I liked the pan). Arrange the apples in the center of the circle leaving a 1.5-in border.

Put the sugar in a small mixing bowl. Grate the lemon zest directly into it and rub it in with your hands a bit (it will smell fantastic). Add the rosemary leaves and maybe squnch again (again with the fantastic). Add the butter and flour and rub in with your fingertips til it starts holding together. Sprinkle/distribute it evenly over the apples.

Fold in the edges of the dough in a circle, all around the apples, leaving it open in the middle a la the picture above.

Put it in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until crust is golden and apples are tender.

Let it stand for 5 minutes after you take it out. And then I suggest pouring a bit of cream over

the slice you cut for yourself directly afterwards.

Spring Chicken; A Fairy Tale

Dear Mouse,

Once upon a time in New York City, two sisters made May Eve Dinner.

They just about fit in the kitchen.

They dined atop a high hill on the 7th floor overlooking 7th avenue, on the 30th night of the 4th month of the year, with The Fiance and Mr. & Mrs. Mighty Hunter in attendance. Mr. & Mrs. MH are a lovely pair of fellow theatremakers with healthy appetites for good seasonal food and the celebration of arcane holidays. They came bearing wine and a delightful spinach-strawberry-cucumber salad. So far, so good.

They tasted the gravy and it was good.

As everyone knows, May Eve is a magical night where strange things can happen.

No, not that. **

One sister set out to write a final paper, but somehow it turned into a lemon tart!

... and then it disappeared...

And the other sister made the Roast Spring Chicken from Sarah Leah Chase's "Cold Weather Cooking". (Can you guess which sister?) It was said afterwards she must have used faery magic, for how could such a delicious, fragrant roasted meat result from only 5ingredients (not counting chicken) and only a 4-step recipe? (The simplicity makes this very affordable...though I recommend putting those extra dollars into a really really good bird... like the 4lb 'Red Cockerel' I bought from Dickson's Farmstand Meats... uh, I mean, that I won from the Faery Queen after I beat her at Buck Hunter. Um.. whatever. Where was I?)

"We have too many chicken recipes already", the first sister warned. "Post something else."

Right you are.

The Boo's Home-Brewed May Eve Love Potion Tea

(... a refreshing beverage. This is a good non-alcoholic aperitif which would also probably be awesome in your prosecco)

fresh red rose petals

dried damiana leaf (available at Flower Power in the East Village or similar)

fresh mint leaves

honey or agave syrup (optional)

Damiana leaf is a sort of spearmint-meets-anise-tasting herb that is rumored to be aphrodisiac and also to have perhaps been used in the original margarita recipe... of all things. Live and learn.

Pour 2 C boiling water over 1 C fresh rose petals in heatproof bowl. Let steep until cool, drain. Reserve the lovely pink liquid. Pour 1 C of boiling water over 1-2 heaping tsp damiana leaf in teapot. Throw in a few mint leaves. Steep 20 min. (This makes 1 Cup;obviously use more of both depending on how much tea you want). Add maybe 1/4 C of the rose water and some sweetener of choice, stir while still warm. Serve cold with a mint leaf or two.

Happy May!

Love,

The Boo

** PorkHart, a live band burlesque experiment helmed by The Boo and The Mayor last week in celebration of spring. No food was served.