Suffolk Foodie: Apples ..... more Apples!

Windfall Bramleys

Autumn's dropouts

Thump!  Another one hits the patio!  It's the sound of Autumn arriving.  Having recently moved back to stay with parents I have been looking at the family tree.  The family apple tree.

The apple tree has long been a feature of our family gardens.  As a child the first thing that happened when we arrived at my Grandfather's North London house was to climb the apple tree.  Whichever cousin (there were eventually twelve of us) arrived for the gathering first, the trick as we reached a certain age was to be the first up the tree!

Harvest time as my grandfather became older involved being sent out with a bag to gather the windfalls.  Large quantities of apples were then transported back (picked or naturally harvested either by wind or own weight) to Suffolk.  As the convenience and availability of apples in shops took over the apples increasingly fermented to themselves and were eventually dumped! 

Little Panther at tree base as I Telework
in the Garden trying sufficiently
early in season to avoid windfalls

A sappling was planted nearly 35 years ago in the parent's lawn in Suffolk.  It was supposed to be a half standard!  Over the years it has spread it's boughs unchecked producing a variety of sizes of apple. It has become a cat exercise frame, a bird feeder support, washing line post, a swing platform for nephew and nieces as well as a slalom hazard for the lawn mower. As it becomes older it is succumbing to various diseases to a greater or lesser extent!

We haven't yet had a transfer of misteltoe as often happens with birds placing seeds from a last meal in a convenient crevice.  This parasitic plant  can reduce the vigour and health of an apple tree.  The season of christmas with mistletoe becoming an economic crop could be one reason to poke about in old orchards.  Old Orchards are becoming sought after as repositories of forgotten varieties that store well and have good taste.

The resurgence of interest in cider is a good example where "artisan" producers are looking to find the mix of good apple that produce juice, enough sugar for natural fermentation but are not necessarily the best for storage.  The variety Sturmer Pippin, very popular in Australia and New Zealand,  was recently rediscovered in the village of Sturmer not 3 miles from where I am writing this blog!  Suffolk has a great tradition of producing good apples and good cider (Aspalls being an example but more on that another day).

Recipe then for windfall apples called Windfall Apple Pudding!
Ingredients

PASTRY
6 oz  (150 g) flour
3 oz (75 g)  cooking fats (Lard etc)
Pinch of salt
Cold water to mix
FILLING
2 large eating apples
1 egg
2 oz (50g) caster sugar
1 large cooking apple
1 oz (25g) self raising flour
2 oz (50 g) seedless raisins,
Icing sugar for dredging



Step 1:Set over to 375°F or 190 C .
Pastry
Step 2 :  Put the fats, salt and flour into a bowl, cut the fat into small pieces and rub in lightly.
Step 3: Add about 1 and 1/2  tablespoons water and mix with a fork.
Step 4: Knead lightly and roll out on a floured surface and line an 8 inch pie
plate. Overlap the rim by 1/2 inch (approx 1.5 cm) and turn back the pastry overlap to form a double
rim.

Filling and putting it together.
Step 1: Peel, core and slice the apples, mix with the raisins and pile in the
pastry case.
Step 2: Beat the egg and sugar together in a bowl until thick and creamy, fold
in the flour and pour over the filling.
Step 3: Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.

Dredge with icing sugar and serve with custard or pouring cream.

Tomorrow?  More Apple stories that may involve Chips but only of the type prepared from fruit from the tree!

The Saturday Garden Shed 2

Started Saturday 19th February 2011 0627 GMT

The Sweet Pea Sowing Season

Saturday has come round again.  This time of year is the time when the sweet pea can be sown.  The town of Wem where they were developed was the district "county town" for North Shropshire.  This was the district that I lived in at the time when I was carrying out the agricultural research phase of my career.   This is an incredibly rural area much like West Suffolk.  Shropshire at that time was billing itself as the undiscovered county.  I would say still that most people of any age would be hard put to state where Shropshire is on a map.

I remember when I was younger Sweet Peas were one of the plants that my maternal grandfather always grew.  After a career in the Customs Service chasing gold smugglers around Bombay (Mumbai now) he arrived in this country in 1955,  along with my grandmother and mother, the elder children were already here joining the Royal Navy and doing other things.  This was a few months before the Suez Canal, through which they passed, was closed to shipping.  A little reminiscent of times of today.

I say arrived because he was part of that generation that had been involved the British Empire.  Born in what is modern day Pakistan from an Irish family who supervised building the Railways he married my grandmother in 1931 who herself was from an ex-pat family and born in Simla.  Her mother was the Governor of the Women's Prison in Lahore.  After arriving in the Port of London he took up the post at the BBC News department that he came to England for rather going to Australia, where many of my relatives ended up after Indian Independence.   After retiring at the age of 70 with his house paid off within fifteen years he then set about gardening for the next nearly 30 years or so before passing at the, we usually say now, grand old age of 99.  A pretty full and eventful life life even by today's standards of global society.

Visits when I was a child from my grandparents often included a trip Robert  and Sons in Sturmer, the same place that I blogged about nearly three weeks ago,  Sweat Pea plants  were bought and then taken back to their house in Ponders End.  So with a view to continuing my own gardening career,  although being born in 1966 I have a long way to go before officially retiring (sorry there is no retirement age anymore for those of my age), I have some of Mr Fothergill's  of Newmarket  seed.  So today is sowing day to produce the plants to produce that traditional cottage garden effect and to enhance my sense of Wellbeing which I have to say 2 weeks into a running my own business is starting to be high.