Apple sauce is so completely easy to make that it hardly seems necessary to write a recipe.  Peel apples, add sugar, cook, cool, that’s about all there is to it. However, there are a few tips that help assure that your results with be top.  Here are a couple:

• Apple sauce is a great destination for bruised or damaged fruit or even apples that have insect damage. Just cut out the bad parts and use the rest for applesauce. This is especially helpful if you have your own apple tree and need to use fallen or overripe fruit.
• Peel or not to peel?  Well, leaving the peel means that your apple sauce will have a maximum of good nutrients, most of which are concentrated in the peel.  But not everyone likes having pieces of peel in the finished sauce, its not a great textural thing. My solution is to simmer the peels with the water to capture all the nutrients, then strain this cooking liquid over the apples to make the sauce.
• If you are not a fan of white processed sugar, use honey. By selecting a honey with a flavor profile you like, you can add a lovely flavoring element to your applesauce. Ask your local honey artisan, as honey from different parts of the year can taste very different. Also, you can vary the amount of sugar or honey you use to suit your taste for sweetness.
• While peeling and coring your apples, it is best to hold them in a bowl of water acidified with lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. This will prevent them for oxidizing and give a better color to your sauce.

Here is another recipe from my grandma’s favorite cookbook, “The Lilly Wallace New American Cookbook”. For those of you who are too young to remember apple butter, there is no butter in apple butter. It is, instead, like apple sauce reduced to the consistency and sweetness of jam.  My grandma flavored hers with warm spices, like cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. When I was a kid, my favorite sandwich was peanut butter and home-made apple butter.

In 2018, we planted a little apple tree in a sunny SE corner of our yard.  These days, it has grown to important size and yields a lot more lovely eating apples than we can possibly eat.  So after having given bags to all our friends and neighbors, and eaten apples everyday for a month, it seemed like a good idea to use the remaining box for chutney.

This recipe is based on Indian chutneys that I have enjoyed and copied. It is more in the savory-spice direction than the hot-spicy, so it makes a great accompaniment to grilled or roasted pork or even with broiled fish.

Fin d’Hiver en Normandie

Tuesday March 20, 2018

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Huitres crues au citron, bigorneaux mayonnaise,
crevettes rosé au beurre à l’ail
Local oysters raw on the half shell with lemon; periwinkles and whelks with saffron mayonnaise; wild caught Gulf prawns with garlic-thyme butter

Tripes à la mode de Caen et ses crêpes au sarrasin farcies aux poireaux et à l’artichaut
Beef tripe simmered for 12 hours with calf’s foot, cider, onions, carrots and calvados, with buckwheat crepes stuffed with leek-artichoke compote

 
Sole à la Dieppoise sur lit d’épinards et de champignons
Sole filets baked on a bed of spinach and mushrooms, served with a creamy white wine sauce, mussels, clams and bay shrimp

Tarte au Pont l’Evêque, salade à la frisée, aux noix et aux pommes
Tart filled with Pont l’Eveque cheese and crème fraiche, served with a salad of curly endive, walnuts and apples

 
La fameuse teurgoule normande
Rice baked with raw, whole-fat milk and cinnamon, served with calvados and sablé cookies

Dinner including beverage* $90
*paired wines or non-alcoholic beverage

For this special event, No Substitutions Please.
Reservations by phone only at 206.709.7674
Price does not include service charge and WA State tax