Stewed vanilla apples with orange peel
and calvados
Last sunday I was invited to a wonderful afternoon coffee. The event took place in a tiny little allotment in the south of Berlin. To be honest, I´m really no fan of
allotments because of their narrowness and all those neighbours sitting so close to you that they can understand every word you say. My personal conception of a
garden is wild and big, neighbours far away. But I have to admit that being there under a sunshade on a lazy hot afternoon, having coffee and nice cakes combined with interesting talks was cushy and very recreative.
Furthermore, the smell of the little wooden house there reminded me to the smell of our old sailing boat at the Chiemsee. That was why I fell in the mood of thinking about other tastes of childhood. One of those tastes were light warm stewed apples with cream of wheat sprinkled with cinamon and sugar.
Different garden apples as inspiration
Having the opportunity to get a few fresh garden apples to take with me, I did not hesitate a minute. Driving home with this nugget of a frist-class ingredient, having their fresh smell in my nose, I invented a huge amount of combinations for stewed apples with different spices and flavours in my mind. The one I nominated as the winner I tried later on in my kitchen.
Taste enhancement: Orange, vanilla, brown sugar,
butter and calvados
Important with my winner was to use spices that enhance the apples very own flavour. Cinamon and cloves, the first spices that came to my mind, are also very tasteful in combination with apples. But I regarded them as too strong together with the bright and sour natural taste that fresh garden apples donate.
My idea was to add more slight tastes that enhance the apple aroma and so I decided to use orange, a bit of vanilla, butter sugar and last but not least Calvados.
I started to brown butter and sugar softly with an opened vanilla bean in a flat pot. Afterwards I added the peel of one orange cut in stripes.
Shortly before the brown suggar-butter became dark, I added a bit more than a quater of fine calvados in sips and reduced the heat.
After having met the peeled and sliced apples, more or less 750 grammes, in the pot, I stirred it altogehter carefully. It really has to be cooked very slowly about 20 minutes – lid on. Before the stewed apples cooled down completely I lifted the lid and was very content about the smell:-) I put a small amount of stewed apples into a bowl and served them with a spoon of double cream and a few fine stripes of orange peel. This was an unbelievable harmonic finale for a lazy sunday afternoon in august spent in an allotment.
dolce vita ahoi • mobile minds • monika ebert
