Happy Thanksgiving, to my American friends. (And happy nice day in autumn to the rest of you.)
What apples do you favor for making pie? I like a tart apple with a rich flavor that holds its shape when i cook it. My favorite is Jonathan, but Thanksgiving is too late in the season for it, and it slumps too much in pie if i save it until now. So yesterday i used crimson crisp for the apple cranberry pie, and idared for the apple pie.
Sometimes i buy a few caville blanc in season and make s fancy tart with paper-thin slices. (Well, maybe my slices are 2mm thick. Which is to say, very thin.)
Claygate Pearmain has made the best apple pies in my home. Esopus Spitzenburg is also quite good, though it makes a sweeter pie than the other varieties Iām including. Your previously mentioned Calville Blanc is great, although it produces a pie with a decided crunch, so if softer fruit is a must, CB may not be to everyoneās liking. Tree ripened Granny Smith also makes an excellent pie. Clearly, I like my apple pieāand my apples in generalāon the zingy side.
I just tasted a rustic tart I made with Calville Blanc and the fruit held its shape nicely and wasnāt crunchy. Somewhat on the sharp side, but I had issues getting my apples to ripen this year. It might be because I prepared and froze the apples before thawing them and making the tart.
Hmmm. Maybe the CB pie Iām recalling was a little underbaked. We havenāt made many CB apple pies up to now, maybe even just the one I recall. The pie my wife baked yesterday for tonightās Thanksgiving dinner has about a 60-40 split between Spitz and CB. It will be interesting to see if the apples are uniformly tender.
I stopped to pick up apples for pie and they didnāt have any of the usual baking apples available (NY had a late hard freeze that decimated apple crops this year). I wasnāt sure what to choose, ended up with Jonagold. I have no idea how this pie is going to turn outā¦ My usual would be a mix of Cortland and Northern Spy.
āSpies for piesā as the saying goes. Besides being my favorite for everything except training, Northern Spy makes an exceptionally good pie. I donāt add sugar or spices, just 1/4" slices layered into a 9" lard crust, with the last of 6 average size apples cubed small to fill in the gaps and mound the center. Cut a small x into the top crust center and cook @350f. for an hour.
That and good Sumatran coffee with milk is breakfast for me until the fresh apples run out.
I prefer a tarter apple, but jonagold is an excellent pie apple. (And i like more acid in my fruit and fruit pies than most people.) It has a nice rich flavor and doesnāt get too mushy.
Everything about Northern spy should be perfectā¦ But itās commonly used in commercial pies, and Iāve had a lot of mediocre commercial pies, and as a result, i have learned to dislike the flavor of cooked northern spy apples. Yeah, Iām a pastry snob. So even though northern spy is everything a pie apple ought to be, and i can buy it before Thanksgiving (when i always make apple pie) i never use it. I like it fresh, though.
Iād be very surprised to find that true Northern Spy apples are used commercially/industrially anywhere in the USA since the late 1970ās. Indeed, something like āSpigoldā was developed specifically to replace real Spies, as their lack of profitability under modern systems has ruled them out of the running since at least then.
From those I knew whose Yankee roots went back into the 19th century- and whose families back to the 17th- apple pie IS a breakfast food! Adding a chunk of cheddar moves it up to the smaller part of āsupperā (ālunchā, as we call it now) with ādinnerā at night, where theyād eat their apples baked, as dessert.
An awful lot of apples kept hunger away from those stony landsā¦
My Sister was a professional chef, operating a commercial bakery with my Father, and won several awards nationally for her apple (and other) pies. She used Granny Smith, but in the modern way of pre-cooking the filling/ using lots of sugar and spices, etcā¦
I do two apple pies for Thanksgiving. One is just 3 pounds of sliced apple with half a cup of brown sugar, some cinnamon and butter. Oh, and maybe 2 tablespoons of corn starch. The other is a spiced apple cranberry pie with a little less than a pound of raw cranberries, a little more than 2 pounds of apple, cut into cranberry-sized cubes, 3/4 cup white sugar, and lots of cardamom, allspice, mace, and a hint of clove. And probably also corn starch.
Iāve never seen Calville Blanc in stores where I live (Reno, NV) or anywhere else, for that matter. I get them off of a very productive tree in my orchard.
Rhode Island Greenings from a neighbor. RIGs are perfectly fine/very good in pies, and this year those are the apples that we have the most of. Also my wife likes Marlboro Pie for Thanksgiving, and it has lots of lemon that negates much of the apple flavor, anyway.
Yeah, Iām a pastry snob. So even though northern spy is everything a pie apple ought to be, and i can buy it before Thanksgiving (when i always make apple pie) i never use it. I like it fresh, though.
