| |
 |
A
Is for Apple : More Than 200 Recipes for Eating, Munching,
and Cooking With America's Favorite Fruit
by Greg Patent (Preface), Dorothy Hinshaw Patent (Preface),
Greg Patent, Janet Pedersen |
Amazon.com
It's hard to believe that bananas are the most popular fruit
in the United States, followed by apples, but there you have
it. Such small but telling details can be found in Greg Patent
and Dorothy Hinshaw Patent's A Is for Apple. That, and every
apple recipe you might ever want to try.
If there were only Red and Golden Delicious apples to choose
from, there wouldn't be much point. In relating the stories
of these two apples, the authors tell a condemning story of
modern American fruit production, where marketing has won
out over the market. Both the Red and the Golden truly were
delicious at one time in their odd histories, but years of
selecting for color and shape over flavor has robbed these
two apples of their legacy. Fortunately, small-scale farming
has found a niche and farmers' markets have grown in every
community, so apples in season with names you have never heard
of and flavors you have never encountered are available. They
may cost a little extra, but they are real.
Though there is enormous pleasure to be had in just eating
a ripe apple in season, there's a lot of cooking to be done
out there, too. The authors have divided the recipe chapters
of A Is for Apple into "Pies and Tarts"; "Desserts"; "Cakes
and Cookies"; "Breads"; "Soups and Salads"; "Seafood and Game";
"Poultry"; "Beef, Pork, and Lamb"; and "Side Dishes." There
are chapters on basics, growing, and oddball information,
too.
There is an apple pie recipe in this book, and then its deep-dish
cousin, and then the same with rhubarb, and so on. But there's
a recipe for apple-venison sausage, too. And apple rice pudding,
and spicy apple dumplings, and oatmeal-apple-nut bars, and
cider gingerbread with cider cream, and Latvian pumpernickel
and fruit soup; then there's trout with cider, chanterelles,
and cream; and duck breasts with cider, orange, and Calvados
sauce. You get the idea: the whole big apple kit and caboodle.
-- Schuyler Ingle
|
|
