Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee magazine and co-host of the public television series, Weekends with Yankee. And Amy loves apples! There are over 100 scrumptious recipes in this book. And, I really appreciated the 34-page guide to apples which consists of a photo of the apple and a description with interesting facts about it. I’m now motivated to find a try a Northern Spy apple! Who knew there were so many different varieties of apples?
My only quibble with this book is the dearth of photos. I’d like to see what some of these wonderful recipes look like when done. Despite that, this is the Gold Standard for Apple recipes. Are you a fan of apples? What’s your favorite? GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Recipe Index — 8
Acknowlegements — 13
Chapter One: Introduction — 16
Chapter Two: Apple Varieties: A Complete Primer — 30
Chapter Three: Cooking Tips and Pantry Notes — 72
Chapter Four: Soups and Starters — 82
Chapter Five: Vegetable Entrees, Sides, and Salads — 100
Chapter Six: Poultry, Meat, and Fish Entrees — 132
Chapter Seven: Pancakes, Donuts, Biscuits, and Breads — 166
Chapter Eight: Pies, Crisps, Cobblers, Buckles, and Betties — 202
Chapter Nine: Dumplings, Bakes, Cakes, and Puddings — 254
Chapter Ten: Condiments and Cocktails — 299
Chapter Eleven: Beyond Baking: Apple Festivals, Products, and Pairings –312
Bibliography — 323
Index — 325
I love apples. Especially apple pie. Growing up we had an apple tree in our backyard. Not the eating kind but my mother would make pies from them. All love cider. Unfortunately being diabetic I rarely eat apples. Too much sugar. Especially in pies. A chapter on soups? That doesn’t sound good.
Steve, I confess I’ve never tasted an apple soup. Like you, I grew up eating the apple pies my Mom baked. Yummy!
Pink Lady apples are my favorite—crisp and tart but with a bit of sweetness. However, I don’t do too much baking with apples, probably because most apple recipes I encounter include cinnamon and that is not one of my favorite spices.
Deb, I’m with you on Pink Lady apples: crisp and tart…and then an aftertaste of sweetness kicks in!
They stopped having good Cripp’s Pinks around here…went over to Sweet Tangos. Similar.
Todd, I think distribution of apples has been affected by the Pandemic. Several varieties that used to be common have disappeared from the Produce Section of our grocery store.
I will eat any apples but road.
Apple pie? Yum! Best made by mixing two or three apple types (so that the various consistencies and flavors mix) and served cold with a piece of cheddar cheese, or hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream
Jerry, Diane’s apple pies go well with ice cream!
Yes. Jackie’s current favorite is Winesap. I like Macoun and Empire, but have been reduced to Golden Delicious lately.
Jackie used to make apple tortes. She also cooked Weight Watchers baked apples for herself, because yuck. Do not like baked apples. I do love apple pies, also apple cake, apple torte, apple turnovers, etc.
Jeff, clearly you are an Apple Guy!
How did I forget apple cobbler? One of our groceries sells delicious individual pieces of cobbler, which usually can last me 2-4 days, depending how much self control I have.
Jeff, for some reason apple cobbler isn’t common around here. Peach cobbler seems to be more popular.
“Apple Lover?” I really really enjoy apples, if they’re properly prepared, but I’m not ready to commit.
Dan, maybe you just need more “experience” with apples.
I buy a lot more than I eat. Pink Lady is also my favorite.
Patti, apples are a regular item on Diane’s Shopping List. We’re going to try some of the apple varieties that we learned about in THE APPLE LOVER’S COOKBOOK.
Jackie had a whole wheat apple muffin for breakfast.
Jeff, Diane plans on baking some Apple Crisp this weekend.
I love apples. Sprouts ( a healthy food type market) had an event several years ago with about 20 varieties of apples, many I’d never heard of. It was great. Some of the apples never showed up again. I keep hoping they’ll repeat the event, but haven’t. When Beth, Jackie & I were in FL for an Old Girls Gone Wild I remember trying a new to me apple but don’t remember the name.
Honeycrisp is always a favorite with me. I’d try the soup. My recipe in the Malice Domestic cookbook is my mom’s raw apple cake (they rejected my “how to burn Jello” submission
Maggie, Diane and I like Honeycrisp apples, too. I was surprised by the 40 pages of apple photos/descriptions in THE APPLE LOVER’S COOKBOOK. So many apples I have tasted yet!
Everyone knows Washington State apples, but I bet not as many know that New York State also grows a bunch of them. (We are #2 to Washington.) In season, we usually go downtown to the big Farmer’s Market outside the courthouse and buy a week or two’s worth of apples at the market. Since the pandemic, you can no longer pick out your own, but tell them which variety you want and how many, and they fill a bag for you. Jackie’s preference is for a very hard, tart apple. I believe Empire is a cross between McIntosh and Red Delicious. It was introduced in New York State in the ’60s. They are “red, juicy, firm, crunchy and sweet,” too sweet for Jackie’s taste. The Macoun (pronounced either Ma-cown or Ma-coon, my preferred pronunciation) is a hybrid of the McIntosh and Jersey Black. They remain firm. The problem is a very short growing season so they aren’t available for long. We are #2 in world cultivation, but China produces eight TIMES as many apples as we do. The Pacific Northwest produces almost 70% of the US apple crop.
Jeff, a lot of apples are grown in Western NY. My Mom and Dad used to take us apple picking in the Fall. They would drive us out to a farm nearby and we would pick a couple of bushels of apples. My Mom would bake apple pies and apple crisp. Any excess apples went to our poor neighbors and their kids.
I really don’t like “soggy” apples, so firmness is a priority for me. I knew NY was a good producer of apples, from visits to the syracuse area I knew someone who had an apple tree and every other year (or so it seemed) they would be spectacular. Not sure why not every year
Maggie, like you I’m not fond of soggy apples. The Syracuse area grows plenty of apples of various types.
Rainfall, etc.
Honeycrisp are our favorites. We eat three apples a week, sometimes more. I grew up in Southern California, where Apple trees don’t grow, or at least not commercially. On vacations to the Pacific Northwest we always bought apples at roadside stands by farms. I like them fresh & cold, unless in cobbler or strudel.
Rick, apples are a staple in the Kelley Kitchen. Sometimes the apples end up in salads, sometime in pies, apple crisp, cobblers, and strudels. Pure Heaven!
I grew up with apples – they were the cheapest fruit you could get in Germany after the war so my mother would cook sauce, jam – later mixed with other fruits.
In the autumn my sisters and I would go out of the small town we lived in and collect the apples fallen from the trees besides the roads – that was legal.
Pies of course and oven baked apples with sugar added which gave a kind of caramel.
My first wife’s family had akind of apple plantation – together we harvested more than 1000 kg in good years which were turned into cider, kept in old wooden kegs and usually drunk with sparkling water and some lemons added.
Some apples were stored in the cellars and good until next year February or so.
When we had too much cider we’d have it turned into apple-Schnaps – but you had to pay tax there …
When I bought the summer house in Hungary we were in a similar situation and when I met my new wife she told me that you could also dry apples. We bought a construction consisting of a small heating element, a ventilator and several plastic disks on which you could put apple slices. And in 16 to 24 hours the slices would be dried – and very sweet and yummy.
Then we filled them in large glasses, around a gallon each …
A lot of work all of this – but we only use our own apples, guarabteed without any pesticides or other chemicals, really healthy!
Wolf, Diane uses apple cider in several recipes. Diane’s mother loved apple jam, too!
When I was a teen there was an abandoned orphanage across the highway from my cousin’s house, and part of it was an apple orchard! We’d sit in an apple tree and eat red apples until we were glutted. One year we put a dozen each in lunch bags and sold them door to door for 25 cents each! We bought Wham-O slingshots with the profits! In fact, it was all profit!
Nowadays, I can walk two minutes from my house and find apple trees, one red, one green, with all the fruit I want! Plums and grapes, too!
I love free fruit!
Bob, sounds like you’re living in the Garden of Eden! Watch out for snakes!
Retzer Nature Center in Waukesha (and just down the road from me) has a 1-day Apple Fest each year (except 2020) in mid-September.
There’s a tent of folks selling heirloom apples in bulk with tips on when a particular apple is best used.
They also have apple cider (hot or cold), homemade apple pies (delicious), and taffy apples, most poisonously covered with M&Ms, jimmies, gumdrops – you get the idea.
I share Amy’s love of apples!
Beth, I could be tempted by those apples covered with M&Ms!