apple treat

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Joonsy

Native
Jul 24, 2008
1,483
3
UK
apples a-plenty at this time of year, a quick snack below, cut into portions and thrown into a pot with a little water with a bit of butter and sugar added to taste and boiled for 5 minutes or so till soft.

 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
I'll trade you the butter for a little cinnamon & even less nutmeg.
What are your 3 favorite apple varieties?
Done as you do, they all taste so very different, which is good.

Me #1 Spartan, #2 Red Delicious, #3 Granny Smith.
 

Joonsy

Native
Jul 24, 2008
1,483
3
UK
hi, I just forage wild apples growing in the hedgerows/woods on my walks, i don't know what variety most of them are as being wild i imagine most are hybridised anyway and like you say some are better than others. I just pick and sample for taste. Some of those that are not nice to eat straight off the tree are rendered nice to eat when cooked so it's a nice way to use them instead of overlooking them. All those in photo were found growing wild, the very big one on left was not nice raw but nice cooked, the middle one i find loads of that type and taste differs from tree to tree but most are nice cooked, the two on right i do know as they are some type of russet i believe and are nice both raw and cooked. I also come across many crabs as well. Where i do a lot of walking there are quite a few old apple trees dotted about that were once orchards many years ago which were abandoned but some of the trees still remain, i imagine many of the trees i come across have been seeded from these old apple trees and probably hybridised over the years. ATB.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Tasty :) I do like apples, and I like the variety of British apples we find. Many of the old ones don't do so well when the huge food companies try for bulk and every fruit identical to supply supermarkets, but they have their own niche, and they often taste so much better than the bland ones on offer.

You could peel and core and slice the apples into chunks and gently fry in a little of the butter. If you add sugar it makes an almost butterscotch type caramel sauce. Tastes wonderful :)
The frying in butter and sugar works well on some of the tart tasting crab apples, even the harder ones, and the billy lid rinses out with hot water.

M
 

Joonsy

Native
Jul 24, 2008
1,483
3
UK
You could peel and core and slice the apples into chunks and gently fry in a little of the butter. If you add sugar it makes an almost butterscotch type caramel sauce. Tastes wonderful :)
The frying in butter and sugar works well on some of the tart tasting crab apples, even the harder ones, and the billy lid rinses out with hot water.

oh yes I've done that as well, a great way to cook them perhaps better, fried in butter with sugar delicious :) like you say it's worth noting that some are much harder than others as well while some go soft quickly others don't. By me so many wild apples just rot on the ground, i wonder how many people walk past them on their way to the supermarket.
 

Nice65

Brilliant!
Apr 16, 2009
6,438
2,859
W.Sussex
hi, I just forage wild apples growing in the hedgerows/woods on my walks, i don't know what variety most of them are as being wild i imagine most are hybridised anyway and like you say some are better than others. I just pick and sample for taste. Some of those that are not nice to eat straight off the tree are rendered nice to eat when cooked so it's a nice way to use them instead of overlooking them. All those in photo were found growing wild, the very big one on left was not nice raw but nice cooked, the middle one i find loads of that type and taste differs from tree to tree but most are nice cooked, the two on right i do know as they are some type of russet i believe and are nice both raw and cooked. I also come across many crabs as well. Where i do a lot of walking there are quite a few old apple trees dotted about that were once orchards many years ago which were abandoned but some of the trees still remain, i imagine many of the trees i come across have been seeded from these old apple trees and probably hybridised over the years. ATB.

Most, if not all, of our eating apples are grafted. That's a guaranteed fruit producing shoot grafted onto a reliable rootstock, so they don't grow from seed 'true to type'. Planting say, a Golden Delicious seed, won't produce a tree that grows Golden Delicious, its more likely to produce something akin to a crabapple. Many hedgerow and roadside trees are the result of a thrown apple core or dropped apple, there's no hybridisation, that's something that happened way before the apple dropped and seeded.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I heard a lady giving two wee boys into bother because they were picking ripe cherries straight from the tree. "Don't do that! they're dirty!", she said.

I thought no wonder bairns end up with asthma and the like. How the hang are they supposed to build up immunities? and the cherries are good food….I've been taking them from that tree when I pass by for years :D
Too many people don't have a clue what real fruit, without sugars and the like, taste like.
The Victorians and Edwardians really did produce an enormous range of apples, and they had such different qualities, from desert to cooking, dainty to keeping, sweet to tart.
We miss so much variety these days, we really do. I envy those who can get to local apple festivals :D

Baked apples stuffed with raisins, butter, brown sugar and a shake of spice through them are a quiet Winter pleasure :) and the microwave makes them even quicker than the oven. Pack peeled ones in pastry and bake them though, and it's a lovely pudding, add custard and no-one will have room left to want anything more :rolleyes: they bake well in a campfire too though, if you're careful. The fried in butter and sugar works easier on a fire I find, though I do like them poached as you have done. Nice mixed with late plums too, especially in a crumble.

Simple foods, tasty foods, it's rather the time of year for them, isn't it ? :)

Nine o'clock at night and I'm hungry again :eek:

M
 

Joonsy

Native
Jul 24, 2008
1,483
3
UK
Most, if not all, of our eating apples are grafted. That's a guaranteed fruit producing shoot grafted onto a reliable rootstock, so they don't grow from seed 'true to type'. Planting say, a Golden Delicious seed, won't produce a tree that grows Golden Delicious, its more likely to produce something akin to a crabapple. Many hedgerow and roadside trees are the result of a thrown apple core or dropped apple, there's no hybridisation, that's something that happened way before the apple dropped and seeded.

I heard a lady giving two wee boys into bother because they were picking ripe cherries straight from the tree. "Don't do that! they're dirty!", she said.

I thought no wonder bairns end up with asthma and the like. How the hang are they supposed to build up immunities? and the cherries are good food….I've been taking them from that tree when I pass by for years :D
Too many people don't have a clue what real fruit, without sugars and the like, taste like.
The Victorians and Edwardians really did produce an enormous range of apples, and they had such different qualities, from desert to cooking, dainty to keeping, sweet to tart.
We miss so much variety these days, we really do. I envy those who can get to local apple festivals :D

Baked apples stuffed with raisins, butter, brown sugar and a shake of spice through them are a quiet Winter pleasure :) and the microwave makes them even quicker than the oven. Pack peeled ones in pastry and bake them though, and it's a lovely pudding, add custard and no-one will have room left to want anything more :rolleyes: they bake well in a campfire too though, if you're careful. The fried in butter and sugar works easier on a fire I find, though I do like them poached as you have done. Nice mixed with late plums too, especially in a crumble.

Simple foods, tasty foods, it's rather the time of year for them, isn't it ? :)

Nine o'clock at night and I'm hungry again :eek:

M

thanks for the input Nice65 :)

some more great recipes there Toddy, wow i have eaten well today but somehow your reply is making my mind tell me my belly is less full than it is and needs topping up :)
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
Sorry, I forget how old your country is, how long people have sustained some form of organized agriculture.
Abandoned homestead apple trees here are very few and far between. Not at all hard to identify at any time of year
as we have so few hardwood/broadleaf tree species, anyway! What the old varieties were which might have been planted is anyones guess.
The growth habit, the number of spur shoots, bark and leaf color = all so different from today.

What happens here is that some body comes up with a new variety such as Honeycrisp or Gala.
The next darling of the apple industry, growers will remove a thousand acres of producing orchards for the sake of what's new.
The development is always cross pollination.
The propagation and proliferation is by grafting (the science of which earned me a postgraduate degree in botany).

I buy pork or beef sausages which need cooking. I cut them into 1" pieces and into the pan.
Cut and core an apple (per sausage) into 8 pieces.
Toss with cinnamon and add to the sausages near the end as the apple cooks quickly.
I've done much the same with pan fried pork chops.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Where I live, in the Clyde Valley, it was prime orchard country. Those orchards couldn't compete agin modern agri-businesses though, and many of the orchards lie abandoned. Plums, damsons, greengages, apples of every variety, cherries, pears….the sheer amount of fruit that drops, to lie and rot, makes images of starvation hard to believe somehow.

I have elderly neighbours who have had their 'aiple' trees cut down because they could no longer deal with all the fruit. Young folks with families both work now, and they rarely have time for processing crops to store for themselves. In the supermarkets one may buy apples all year long, and those bland and waxed fruits have become what is expected.

HWMBLT is going wandering on Monday to a nearby orchard we know of that has been abandoned at least fifteen years. He'll bring me home a rucksack full of fruits :D Might even be a few pears in the haul :) and I'll dry them and make fruit leather and apple 'butter' (we just call it apple spread here), and I'll bake apple things for the next week…much to Son2's delight.
Our own small apple tree is late ripening and the fruits are only just starting to really colour up and fill out. It's a good keeping apple though, so those will be picked over to sort out the best of them to keep, while any damaged or really mishaped ones will be used up soonish.

I like apple in things like veggie curry, but my husband (the only meat eater in the house) likes apples baked in a casserole dish with things like gigot chops or pork medallions.

Sorry Joonsy :eek: we've rather taken your thread off course.

M
 

Joonsy

Native
Jul 24, 2008
1,483
3
UK
joonsy started this food thing! Such an appetizing picture to celebrate autumn foods.
Now I have to do pork chop with apple for supper!

glad to have got you into the spirit Robson Valley, thanks for your input have a great nosh up, you are all making me feel like getting my cook pots out again even though i have only just put them away :) ATB.

Where I live, in the Clyde Valley, it was prime orchard country. Those orchards couldn't compete agin modern agri-businesses though, and many of the orchards lie abandoned. Plums, damsons, greengages, apples of every variety, cherries, pears….the sheer amount of fruit that drops, to lie and rot, makes images of starvation hard to believe somehow.

I have elderly neighbours who have had their 'aiple' trees cut down because they could no longer deal with all the fruit. Young folks with families both work now, and they rarely have time for processing crops to store for themselves. In the supermarkets one may buy apples all year long, and those bland and waxed fruits have become what is expected.

HWMBLT is going wandering on Monday to a nearby orchard we know of that has been abandoned at least fifteen years. He'll bring me home a rucksack full of fruits :D Might even be a few pears in the haul :) and I'll dry them and make fruit leather and apple 'butter' (we just call it apple spread here), and I'll bake apple things for the next week…much to Son2's delight.
Our own small apple tree is late ripening and the fruits are only just starting to really colour up and fill out. It's a good keeping apple though, so those will be picked over to sort out the best of them to keep, while any damaged or really mishaped ones will be used up soonish.

I like apple in things like veggie curry, but my husband (the only meat eater in the house) likes apples baked in a casserole dish with things like gigot chops or pork medallions.

Sorry Joonsy :eek: we've rather taken your thread off course.

M

no don't say sorry food talk is friendly talk from any angle:) tangents can often throw up nice surprises. It was once prime orchard country here too, some people that pass by think it is still but they haven't seen it how it used to be, it was once a much bigger concern, trains used to collect the fruit from country stops but now even the railway line is disused, i walk it often. Many orchards fell into abandonment, cherries apples plums. Like you say it seems the fashion today for many people to live in a sterile world, you know i bet those people you mentioned telling off their kids for picking cherries even think they are being health conscious into the bargain, it's ridiculous isn't it, when i was little it was a kids favourite bit of mischief making to go ''scrumping'' i bet many kids don't even know what the word means anymore. I was a scruffy kid that somehow survived to become a scruffy man :) anyway some great chat on the thread, ATB.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
Any apple from the other side of the fence tastes best.

Almost equal is a stop at some run-down road-side produce stand.
Eat on the fly, tossing a trail of peels and pips out the car windows.
 

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