On Apples

Wrapped in their shiny jackets, streaked with gold, blushing red, wine-pungent, tart or dead sweet, so crisp and sturdy with their tantalizing horse race names piled high in their bins in the markets these afternoons, the new bounty of lovely, fresh picked apples is ready.

Surrounded by the glamour fruits of late summer, the common apple is demure. It is the humble representative of virtue and health, faithful all winter, sensibly suited for long storage, resilient in the lunchbox, wildly versatile in the kitchen, easily wedded in the orchard; there is no more modest or reliable fruit in the Northwest markets.

As a city refugee years ago, I can remember, just a few months into my new and quiet life, pulling from the tree my first summer apple, a Yellow Transparent, still buzzing with the sun and rain, its golden, dusky tender skin giving way to the quick melting lemon energy inside, which was so unexpected and powerful that everything else momentarily disappeared.

I had nothing to compare with this. I was dazzled. Truly a newcomer.

The apples of my childhood had smelled and tasted faintly of waxed paper and metal lunch boxes, or perhaps it was that my lunch box always smelled like apples, which had been carefully cut up and nested in their crinkled crushed and breathy covers among endless bologna sandwiches for many long sticky hours in the silence of cloakroom.

I love apples, in particular the good tart ones. I accept the invitation to try the new varieties.

I agree with painters who give them center stage and lush, luminous tones, and who trust them to convey the richness of simplicity, an appreciation of abundance, and the intense beauty of a happy hearth.

I like the hollow crunch and chew. I like watching the sculptural inroads of my advancing tooth marks.

I approve of thriftily picking at the core and the final jubilant toss into the sagebrush for the chipmunks.

Turning these beauties into delicious, chunky, homemade applesauce by the lug or by the kettle-full for breakfast is a worthy task. It is simple work, chatty and satisfying for children with all the peeling, cutting, simmering, stirring, crushing, sweetening, and, best of all, setting the house and yard, the entire neighborhood aglow with the addition of cinnamon.

For an easier project, core and ring-slice hard sweet apples and string them on fine dowels over the woodstove.

For a sublime dessert, a good traveller, easy to serve, I offer you directions for Apple Dumplings. Simply put, they are apples wrapped in pastry and baked. Here are the details.

Make your favorite pastry. I am partial to a Pennsylvania Dutch style dough.

Sift together:

3 C. flour

1 tsp salt

Cut in, using knives, pastry blender, or food processor with metal blade:

1 1/4 C.shortening

The mixture should resemble coarse cornmeal. This is infinitely easier with a food processor.

Beat together:

5 Tbsp. water

1 egg

1 tsp. vinegar

Stir these into the flour mixture lightly. Shape this mixture into a ball and chill until ready to use.

Now peel and core six or so medium sized tart apples.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured, or sugared board. You can add a fine sprinkling of fresh orange peel at this point, too.

Divide the pastry into six balls and roll them out to fit the apples, or roll all of it out and cut six tidy squares which you can just pinch together corner-wise a the top.

Place an apple in the center of each. Fill the hollow with raisins and a mixture of sugar, brown or white, and cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg for a feeling of well being. Top with a tiny pat of butter.

Mold the pastry around each apple, covering it completely. If you have made squares of the pastry, it is possible to form little purse-like packages, very elegant and dear. I have gotten the dough too dry and made awful, crumbly circles and my dumplings looked like lumpy fat shoes. But even then, they tasted wonderful.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes if you can before baking at 425 for about 40 minutes.

Serve warm with ice cream, whipped cream, a jelly glaze, a streusel topping.

Apples. They love you, too.