Lily's Blog

Autumn is here. Autumn used to mean loads of apples, cooking apples.

We bought our last house in 1992. One of the things that really attracted us to that house was the great mature orchard. In fact there were orchards on two sides of the house. When we bought the house, there in a drawer was a list of the varieties of fruit trees, written by the previous owner, on the back of a page from an old calendar. The list (and trees) dated back to the seventies. I framed the list. I really loved those trees.

When we decided to move in 2005, one thing that really bothered me was leaving the orchard. Needs must! We left the list with the new owners, feeling it never belonged to us, it belonged with the house.

Now we have a new house but no mature apple trees. We have sown some. The only problem is the soil is quite wet, our garden being at the end of a slope in the land. Nevertheless Denis and I intend tacking this problem to get fruit trees growing.

A visit to Seed savers will be a must. Seed Savers is a voluntary organisation ‘dedicated to the location and preservation of traditional varieties of grains, fruits and vegetables’. Reading the many of the varieties of apples on their website reminds me of the orchard at our last house but also the one we had growing up.

We were reared on apple tarts, apple sponge, apple dumpling and stewed apples. My children were reared on apple crumble and latterly apple cake. When Patrick first came home from college in the US, I asked him what food he most missed. His girlfriend at the time immediately piped up that she missed apple crumble, she had had it so many times at our house.

In the autumn we peeled loads of apples, lightly stewed them, into the freezer and then proceeded to eat them all winter and spring. Quite the squirrels, we were! Because the apples were stewed, they were great to use in crumbles.

Apple crumble is definitely a firm favourite chez Collison. Here is the recipe from Darina Allen.

Stewed apples
675g cooking apples
45-55g sugar
1 – 2 tablespoons water

Crumble topping
110g white flour
55g butter
55 g castor sugar

Stew the apples gently with the sugar and water, until about half cooked. Turn into a pie dish. (I have never weighed apples, I peel and chop them roughly, add sugar, stew them and taste to see if sweet enough.)

For the crumble topping, rub butter into the flour, then add the sugar. I do weigh the ingredients for this.

Sprinkle the mixture over the apple in the pie dish. Bake in a preheated oven, 180 deg for 30 – 45 minutes, or until topping is cooked and golden.

Often I cook the apples and prepare the crumble topping, store both in the fridge and cook to order. This was because everybody prefers it freshly cooked.

I’ve previously given the recipe for apple cake here.

Now we are going through a few lean years with regard to cooking apples. Watch this space. Hopefully Autumn will soon again mean a plentiful supply of cooking apples.

See, laptops are not the only Apples of importance in this house!