Recipe: Baked Apple a la Stowmarkate

I love baked apples. My mom always makes them in the oven, like my grandma did. That seems to take forever, though, and use a lot of energy for one little apple. 

So, my ingredients:

An apple (This one was a Bramley, but any cooker/eater will do. Sharper is better.)

Raisins

Cinnamon

Sugar

Butter

Your handy-dandy microwave

First, wash & core the apple. Don't worry about missing the middle a little bit, as long as you get most of the core out. Put the apple in a microwave-safe bowl (not on a plate...learned the hard way).

Then, fill the hole with raisins. I don't really measure, and it doesn't matter if they're stuck together - they'll be all nice and gooey when you're done.

On top of the raisins, sprinkle some cinnamon and a little bit of sugar. I only add sugar if the apple is a cooking apple - if it's an eater, you should be fine. Then add a small pat of butter on top, smooshing it down with the raisins as much as possible.

Microwave on high for about 2 1/2 minutes, but keep an eye on it. After about a minute and a half, the apple insides should start bubbling out through the top of the apple. I usually try and wait until quite a bit of apple has come out of the top - it stays in the bowl and makes a really yummy sauce mixed with the cinnamon and butter.

See? The raisins get cooked by the applesauce and the cinnamon and sugar get all mixed in as well. Careful, though - it's hot when it comes out of the microwave, and the apple innards stay hot for quite a while. Enjoy!

Indian Summer

We're having gorgeous weather here - it's making up (a little) for the fact that we had such a cold, wet summer.

I'm such an overachiever - I cooked two new recipes today. Both from the October Good Food magazine. Sadly, it means that neither of them will be on the GF website until next week. First: apple streusel. Kind of like apple pie/crumble. It had a pastry base, apples with lemon (I used lime), cinnamon and nutmeg in the middle, and a brown-sugar crumble on top. YUM. I never bake, but we had friends coming over for coffee so I figured I'd give it a shot. Both John and Kosta had seconds - there's only one small piece left that John and I will have to fight over tomorrow.

We took them to the farm market (they were v. impressed), and we bought some eggplant and leeks and carrots and other fall-y things. So I made a Moroccan eggplant thing with tomato sauce for dinner - John and I were both really surprised at how it turned out. We were originally just planning to make pasta sauce but someone in the neighborhood was roasting a chicken during the afternoon and the smell drove me to do some serious cooking. The eggplant was really tender and not at all bitter. It's definitely a keeper.

I'm almost finished with Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about her year of local and seasonal eating with her family. It was a little dry at first but I love her novels and it's really made me think about what we eat. Her family has given up all commercially farmed (i.e. not free-range) meat products, which I think is a VERY good idea. John and I eat relatively little meat as it is - I'm quite happy to pay a premium for happy cows/chickens/lamb etc. We're also making a conscious effort to eat seasonally - NOT to eat leeks in July and strawberries in November. We've been pretty good about it, for the most part. It all just TASTES so much better when it's in season, and it's cheaper. My mom fed us a lot of seasonal stuff when I was a kid - tomatoes in the summer and squashes and stews in the winter. My dad loves a good steak, though. I've been CRAVING steak for a few days - I think John and I are going to splurge on some this week. I haven't had it in ages and I think I must be low on some vitamins or something - I can't get it out of my head.