Hero Ingredients: Apples

Hero of folk tales and puddings both, the humble apple is also the reigning king of the fruit bowl – portable, durable, delicious. If you don’t fancy seeing your doctor much this year, you know what to eat…

Apples? What’s so special, or seasonal, about them? We can buy them all year round!

Ah yes, but not British ones. And fruit bowl staples they may be – a treat so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine a week without one – but there’s far more variety to, and endlessly more usages for, the humble apple than might immediately meet the eye.

In fact, over 2,300 different varieties have been grown in Britain, of every texture and taste, colour and shape – from nutty, spicy late-season types to fresh, light ones that smell faintly of berries.

Okay, so most of us only eat a dozen or so different types maybe, but the boom in heritage varieties mean there are now far more available than ever before: in farmers’ markets and decent greengrocers, farm shops and even the supermarket. Whatever you choose, they’re at their best right now: the second half of the year, from August through December, is the perfect time for apples.

Of course, apples come in two types – eating and cooking – and woe betide the poor sprat who mistook the second for the first. Eaters are the sweetest – and the tastiest too, combining their sugar with an acidity that’s intriguing. We’re talking Granny Smiths here, and Golden Delicious, and Cox’s Orange Pippins. Though they’re delicious straight from the tree, crunchy and wet, they hold their shape so well they’re good for a certain sort of cooking too. (Many countries don’t really believe in the cooking apple, so they’ve prepared plenty of recipes that feature the good old eating varieties – the tart tatin, say, or various continental pastry things.)

Cooking (or ‘culinary’) apples, meanwhile, are bigger and way more acidic – the Bramley is a classic British one. They’re terribly sour, of course, and demand you add sugar to them while cooking (though not as much as you may think; they mellow quickly when heated, or even if just stored for a fairly long time).

As for what to do with them: what can’t you? Chutney, crumbles, Charlotte, pie and sauce are all classics; apple enjoys being paired with most meat – but pork, sausages and bacon especially – as well as egg and many fish; it works on muesli and pancakes too, and with nuts or cheese. And it’s great with red cabbage or in a salad; strudelled up or simply covered in toffee and spiked down on a stick.

We’ve been eating apples since forever, of course: first in central Asia – there’s a wild species just about hanging on in places like northern Afghanistan that’s the sole ancestor of most of the domestic ones we scoff – then in Turkey and the rest of Europe, too.

Quite when we Brits first got into them isn’t too clear, but they crop up in all the best myths – Greek, Norse, Christian – so it’s safe to say it’s been a hell of a while. In the Norse, eating apples is what gave the gods eternal youth, and fertility too. (In one story, the goddess Frigg sends her crow messenger with an apple. It drops in the lap of a king keen for a child; his wife eats it, has a six-year pregnancy – the poor mare – and eventually gives birth to the hero Völsung by C-section, who kisses his mother as she croaks for loss of blood.)

In Greek and Christian myth, apples are often forbidden fruit – in the Garden of Eden, of course, or as the prize in one of Hercules’ labours. Three silly goddesses arguing over a particular golden apple even indirectly cause the Trojan War.

And in fairytales, they’re everywhere: firebirds are forever nicking the king’s prized apples; the nasty queen poisons Snow White with one; and the epic fail that is Twilight (not actually a fairytale, but close enough) quivers with apple imagery.

(Of course, there’s plenty of scope for confusion in all of this: for many centuries, ‘apple’ was a generic term referring to any delicious foreign fruit or nut that wasn’t a berry – Genesis is never specific so, in reality, Eve could just as easily have been tempted by a lovely cherry or almond.)

As with almost everything we bang on about on these pages, the best apples are tree-ripened and recently picked; do it yourself when you can, and some orchards allow you to. When picking, cup the fruit in your hand and twist a tad; if the stalk comes away from the tree easily, that’s the juicy treat for you. As per everything, firm unblemished skin is the thing.

Most commercial fruit is picked too early, when under-ripe, and stored in air with a high carbon dioxide level to make it last, sometimes as long as six months. Occasionally an imported apple may even have wax on the outside to keep it looking fresh, the cheats. We’d rarely recommend avoiding any sort of apple, but we might be forced to make an exception there…

CRAB WITH CELERIAC AND APPLE

BY MITCH TONKS

“Fresh, crisp apple gives a satisfyingly sweet and juicy note to this dish,” says Mitch. “I like an apple with a more tart and acidic side like a Granny Smith, something with a little more punch than red varieties such as the Gala. The white flesh with bright green skin also adds to the appearance of this dish. Despite being not much of a looker, celeriac, with its knobbly and rather irregular shape, has a fantastic peppery crunch and tastes great raw. It’s also packed with good stuff: vitamin C, antioxidants and the like.

“Combined with some of the best crabmeat from England’s Seafood Coast – white only, for this recipe – these ingredients make for a light, fresh dish that is perfect for the change in season from summer to autumn.”

SERVES 2

75g celeriac, cut into matchstick-size pieces

½ Granny Smith or similar, cut into thin slices on a mandolin

2 radishes, finely sliced

1 tbsp chervil

160g white crabmeat

2 tbsps olive oil

1 lemon, juice

2 slices rye bread (or sourdough)

1 tbsp mayonnaise

1. Put the celeriac into a bowl with the apple, radish, herbs and crabmeat.

2. Dress with the olive oil and add a good squeeze of lemon. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Lift out of the bowl in one handful and then let it fall naturally into a neat pile on the plate. Serve with the mayo and bread on the side.

Mitch Tonks has seafood restaurants in Devon and Dorset; therockfish.co.uk