Apple of My Eye

Summer’s peaches, plums and nectarines are fading away, and apples are taking their place. My favorite is the small, firm, deep-red Jonathan. Its intense flavor--tart but still very sweet--makes it ideal to eat raw and carries through to pies and crisps.

One of my childhood treats was hot biscuits with my mother’s Jonathan apple jelly. She added a sprig of rose geranium, which produced a lovely floral overtone. You can’t buy that sort of flavor in a store.

I also remember adding red cinnamon candies to homemade applesauce and watching the red stain spread as the candies melted.

One of the best salads I’ve tasted lately combined diced Gala apples with cubes of smoked turkey, celery and pecans browned in butter. The dressing: reduced-fat mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

Apples combine well with other fruits. You might try a pear and apple crisp, or apple tarts with strawberry glaze, made with the excellent late crop of California strawberries. I sliced a few leftover prune plums into an apple crisp, and that was a very good blending. For a topping, combine equal parts of butter and flour and twice as much brown sugar as either of those ingredients.

An old-time American dessert that is making a comeback is scalloped apples. Bake sliced apples with sugar, a little cinnamon and butter, thickening the juices with cornstarch or flour. One venerable cookbook recommends adding cheese to scalloped apples. You layer the fruit in a bread crumb-lined baking dish with grated American cheese, top with milk, bread crumbs and butter, then bake.

Another suggests baking sliced apples with lemon juice and crushed peanut brittle. Scalloped apples make a fine accompaniment to roast pork, but that recipe sounds more like dessert.

Sarah Tyson Rorer, who wrote a number of cookbooks around the turn of the century, would have served panned baked apples for dinner. The procedure is to layer sliced unpeeled apples with sprinklings of sugar in a baking dish, add a little water, cover the dish and bake in a hot oven 15 minutes.

Now with those ideas for inspiration, head for the market and choose from the fall bounty of Jonathans, Red and Golden Delicious, Granny Smiths, Romes, McIntosh and other varieties. The increasing supply should make prices reasonable.