Back--With Apple Cobbler

As you may know, we've been away for several weeks. First, it was our vacation to Santa Fe and Telluride

to sleep late, enjoy some great meals, and witness the glorious change in the aspens in the high-elevation passes.

Then we were a week in California, doing publicity events and shooting Thanksgiving videos for chow.com. (More on those soon.)

And then we were in New York for a week on a photo shoot for a celebrity book we ghost-wrote. (Can't say a word more on that one--sorry.)

Whew. Poor Dreydl doesn't even know where he lives. But we're back--and it's apple season for sure in New England. A ripe apple right out of the orchard will almost unfit you for apples the rest of the year. A treat indeed.

So we need to do something with these babies. How about an old-fashioned cobbler with a brown sugar/pecan biscuit topping? Sounds good? Then let's do it.

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Apple Crisp

Well, there it is, ready to go into the oven. Pretty fine, eh?

I promised some recipes that use the sugars I discussed in the last post. So here's one, a perfect dessert for a fall evening--or really anytime.

It's also made with walnut oil--which got used in the Apple Cake here. But any nut oil would work for the topping. You could even use melted butter. Wow.

This recipe has also been adapted from THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK. There's a mix-and-match cobbler/crisp section in that book: seventeen fillings and ten toppings. Here's the apple version with an oaty, maply, nutty, crunchy topping--and with a less-refined sugar, to boot. (That said, I'll give you some "standard" substitutions as we go through the recipe.)

Honestly, I have to hold myself back from picking off that topping, leaving the fruit behind--and I love apples! You won't need any whipped cream or ice cream with this one--although I wouldn't stop you from putting a dollop or a scoop on mine if I come to dinner at your house.

Let's get to it.

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Apple Cake

Apples are in! (At least around us in New England.) They're appearing by the bushel and the peck, despite the drought we've experienced for the past several months.

Natch, it's time for Bruce's apple cake. I can't believe I haven't shared this recipe with you before. It's a staple in our house--even a great breakfast cake, as you'll see.

It's also an old recipe, one he got from his grandmother. In fact, the beat-up, stained recipe card calls it "Israeli Apple Cake." I don't know about the Israeli part (are there apples in Israel?), but I do know she used a tasteless oil for the batter. Blech. If we know anything about real food, we know there's no satiety there. So Bruce has morphed the recipe with walnut oil. Yum.

As you know, we're nuts about nut oils. But one warning: they don't move off the supermarket shelves quickly. If you get a bottle home and it smells rancid when opened, take it back for a full refund! Or consider buying nuts oils from sites like amazon.com. You can find the whole La Tourangelle collection there. Check this out for a three-can supply. Plus, it's lots cheaper than at the grocery store. And if you look up the six-can packs, it's even cheaper. Just make sure you store them in the fridge before and after opening--because all those omega-3s and polyunsaturated fats go whangy pretty fast at room temperature.

Enough with the blather. On to the cake. Did I mention it's a one-bowl wonder? Indeed.

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Autumnal Wheat Berry Salad

Autumn is one of the best reasons we live in New England. And one of the best reasons we live at the elevation we do (1350 feet above sea level--nothing compared to places out west but fairly high for this part of the world) is that we get astounding color. Incessant frosts begin in mid-September. This picture was taken in our backyard--and it tells the tale: a glorious colorscape.

Which also means it's time to start hunkering down. Yesterday, I chopped out withered plants in the garden while Bruce took the air conditioners out of the bedroom windows and did a little cleaning in the garage. All part of shutting the door on winter.

But not before we celebrate this season. And here's our way: a wheat berry salad that's still got all the raw goodness of summer produce while offering a little taste of the chill to come: hard roots, deep (rather than bright) flavors.

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Haroset

When I met Bruce, I attended a church, sang in the choir, did the whole nine yards. I even wrote the Lenten and Advent lectionaries every year.

It was a liberal Presbyterian church in Austin. And frankly, it was a bad time in my life: a nasty divorce, coming out, career upheavals (years and years of a Ph D program and then finally a job teaching at a liberal arts university all led to the whole "I got to get out of academia" mess).

So liberals took me in.

Now, years later, up in liberal New England, I'm still the one goading us on to religion. Left on his own, Bruce probably wouldn't celebrate any religious holiday. So every year, I write the haggadah for Passover. And it's sort of crazy, with people acting out the parts of Moses, Pharaoh, and the rest. I even have plastic bugs and sunglasses and other things to act out each of the plagues.

Thus, I find myself making the haroset today. For the uninitiated, haroset is supposed to represent the mortar with which the Israelite slaves were to build Pharaoh's temples. It's pretty sweet stuff, perhaps to symbolize how God can turn bitter slavery into sweet redemption.

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