Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted by Beth Fish Reads, linking up food-related posts. Click here for links to other bloggers’ Weekend Cooking posts at Beth Fish Reads.
I don’t care what Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Whole Foods, or anyone else says, it’s apple season in New England right now, and pumpkin season doesn’t start until October. Around here, apple season means taking a naturally sweet, fairly healthful fruit…
and turning it into this:
Or this…
I hope it’s not cheating, but I want to count the apple crisp my husband made yesterday (pictured above) towards Trish’s Cook It Up! challenge. She has challenged book bloggers to either use or lose older cookbooks that gather dust while we try shiny new recipes from the Internet or hanker after just-released cookbooks.
The apple crisp recipe was from Made in Vermont: Recipes from Vermont’s Favorite Inns, edited by Coleen O’Shea, which has recipes for Apple Crisp, Apple Crisp with Maple Syrup and Sarah’s Apple Crisp. (Also Apple-Nut Bread, Baked Apple Dandy and nine others with apples as the main ingredient. We were given this cookbook as a gift many years ago (I think when we still lived in Vermont.) so it has sentimental value even though we don’t use it that often, but when we’re looking for New England-y apple or pumpkin recipes, it’s a good place to start.
It’s not great for gluten-free and/or low-carb dieters, but Made in Vermont has enough regional flavor to make it a keeper. The recipes are divided by season, which I like. There are no photos of the food – just little black and white photos of the inns the recipes came from on each page. There is plenty of white space if you like to pencil in notes about the recipes.
Since we don’t run an inn here, many of the entree recipes are too fussy or fancy for me to ever try (e.g. Escargots with Wild Mushrooms and Herbed Butter, p. 124, or Steamed Scallops with Saffron Beurre Blanc and American Sturgeon Caviar, p. 42) but the dessert, side dishes, and soup recipes are more enticing to a home cook. I think I’ll try the Corn, Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque from the Four Columns Inn in Newfane, Vermont soon, and then there’s all the pumpkin and squash recipes to try: Pumpkin Bisque, Maple Pumpkin Bisque, Butternut Squash and Pear Gratin, etc. The recipe for Maple Pumpkin Bisque from the West Mountain Inn in Arlington, Vermont is online here.
Happy Weekend Cooking!
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I miss going apple picking.
I am sooooo lucky to live in apple country. We have several local apple farmers and many people have apple trees in their yards. Nothing is as good as a tree-fresh apple. The grocery store version is not the same.
I agree! We can get locally grown apples around here, too, and they do taste so much better.
I haven’t done that since my kids were little, but maybe someday with the grandchildren. Apple picking tends to draw big crowds this time of year, so I’d rather buy mine already picked!
Although the Made in Vermont book didn’t call for it, I did use a gluten-free flour blend in place of the all-purpose flour in the topping and as a thickener in the apple/maple syrup filling, so this particular recipe was GF-friendly. As for my lack of locavore instincts, I did make up for it when I made this again a few days later with my students, using apples I picked from the orchard at the local convent!
That apple crisp looks so good!
Geez…I live on 7 1/2 acres and you’d think I would have planted apple trees by now! I love apples and desserts made with them are extra special. I don’t feel like I am eating too many bad calories when apples are in dessert.
The apple crisp sounds amazing!! As do some of the other recipes in the cookbook. I’ve never cooked escargot but my stepmom makes it for holidays and it’s always really special. And YAY for apples! I’ll miss the summer berries but apples are so tasty, too.