I’ve had multiple people asking me about Norma’s first article. Apple Enthusiast Magazine can be difficult to track down, and as such, the advice on baking apples that Norma’s supposedly going to provide with her column — advice I am sorely unqualified to give — is nowhere to be found.

Well, I’ve now read the thing and there’s nothing of substance in it. Seriously. She doesn’t even mention apples. Here’s how it starts:

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer. My interests range from homemade potpourri baskets to holiday baking to teddy bears with a knack for solving crimes, but at the end of the day, I’m a writer.

From there, she proceeds to say how happy she is to have joined the Apple Enthusiast team and then gives us some additional Midwest cutesy charm, just barely making sense. Observe: “From a young age I learned that a cherry tart in the hand is better than two in the bush.”

So for all of you who were hoping for some good advice on baking apples, it’ll have to wait at least a week.

In the meantime, here are my picks.

I’ve had a long-standing prejudice against Red Delicious apples. As such, I haven’t tried one for years. And yet, it seems silly to forego a consistent familiarity with one of the most popular and recognizable apples if I’m to keep my finger on the pulse of apple-dom.

First, a little history. Read More →

Okay, so you know how I ended my last column with the admission that I know nothing about which apples are good for baking and that such advice would have to come from a different columnist? Well Igor — that’s the editor’s name — loved that suggestion. In fact, he wrote me back and said exactly that: “Nice suggestion. I’ll get in touch with Norma.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” I wrote. “But I’m glad you liked the column. Who’s Norma?”

He wrote back: “I didn’t like the column. It was much too flip. But I’m hiring Norma as a columnist for baking apples.”

I replied, “Who’s Norma?”

For two days, I didn’t hear from him. Then he emailed again saying that he wanted to have a conference call with me and Norma. I said fine. They called Saturday.

Norma’s the woman who almost got my job last week. She lives in Ohio; Igor lives in Maine. And Igor has a huge crush on her, which was painfully obvious during the conversation.

Here’s approximately how it went:

Igor: So we’ll probably put the two columns side by side. I’m thinking Norma’s will go on the left since, you know, pretty ladies first.

Norma: Whatever you want to do is fine with me, Igor.

(pregnant pause full of disturbing fantasies on Igor’s part, no doubt)

Me: I could care less.

Norma: By the way, Tim, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. I really enjoy your column. Say, I just tried a new apple the other day called a Jonagold. Ever tried one?

Me (choking on my Ashmead’s Kernel): Uh, yeah. Cross between a Jonathan and a Golden Delicious? Yeah, I’ve tried that one.

Norma: Kind of a honeyed, aromatic flavor, really crisp and juicy.

Me: Mm-hmm. So they say.

Igor: Honey? I just love honey. Now pay attention to me, Norma. You’re column’s going to be great. I can’t wait to fawn over it some more. And maybe someday we can meet at a hotel in New York and make out.

Well, that’s an approximation, but it’s more or less accurate. I had to sit through 30 minutes of that crap.

But whatever. I shouldn’t be complaining. After all, I still have my job with Apple Enthusiast magazine. Here’s the column.
Read More →

So, my editor called me up on Wednesday and told me they needed the apple column by Friday this week. I said that’s ridiculous, I don’t get my apples until Saturday. He said fine and hung up.

On Saturday then, I got an email from him saying that they were hiring some woman from Ohio to take my place for the remainder of the fall. I replied with one question: “Does she know what a Cornish Gilliflower tastes like?”

He replied an hour later with this: “No, she doesn’t know what a Cornish Gilliflower tastes like. She said she’s never heard of a Cornish Gilliflower. But, she does know what a Chenango Strawberry tastes like. Do you?”

I wrote back: “Of course I know what a Chenango Strawberry tastes like, you idiot.” (I had nothing to lose since I’d pretty much already been fired.) I contemplated sending him my list of picks for the week and enumerating all of the reasons he should stick with me over the woman from Ohio, not the least of which was the fact that I make references to canonical British Literature, which almost certainly appeals to the British readers of Apple Enthusiast (70% of its readership is British). But I decided to simply hit send and see what it got me.

He replied within a half an hour. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got the job back. But this week’s column better be good. Take care.”

So, without further ado about nothing:

I’ve heard that Shakespeare references an obscure apple variety or two in several of his plays. Or at least, they’re obscure to us these days. Ever heard of leather coats and gilliflowers? Yeah, well, neither have I. But in As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale, among others, there they are.

I suppose if I were writing a sonnet about the Cornish Gilliflower, which I had the pleasure of tasting this week, I’d rhyme it with sour. Of course, I’d prefer to rhyme it with tart, but I wouldn’t know where to start. Ha.

In all seriousness, though, I think it makes sense to start this week’s picks with the Cornish Gilliflower since it’s my favorite for this last September haul. But as I venture farther and farther toward the sour side of the apple stand, I find I’m running out of adjectives. The Lemon Apple and the Cornish Gilliflower are both a little sour, but in different ways than the Pink Pearl or the Orange Pippin or the Calville Blanc d’Hiver.

Let me try to differentiate a little. The Lemon Apple (a new one this week) is more like the classic sour apple. For me, that’s pleasant. It’s why I like Sour Patch Kids at movies. I don’t like the fact that they stick in your teeth, but I love the sour punch you get right when you put them in your mouth and they start to dissolve.

So I’ll go ahead and say the Lemon Apple is the closest thing I’ve had to a real life equivalent of the Sour Apple candy flavor you find in various permutations. It’s quite citrus-y, too, and its flesh is even slightly yellow. So the name really makes sense.

The Cornish Gilliflower is named because it’s supposed to have a slight scent of cloves, which in French is something like gillifle. I don’t know. I didn’t get a clove scent from it, but I did get a very pleasant tart apple taste when I bit into it. Have you ever had an apple cider that makes you pucker? The Cornish Gilliflower is really the closest I’ve come to having an actual apple that tastes like apple cider. It’s quality.

The two other winners for the week were macintosh derivatives. The Jonamac and the Macoun are both superb apples. The Jonamac is quite sugary; the Macoun is basically what a macintosh should be and can be. It’s the macintosh living up to its potential. But both apples have shapes and textures quite similar to actual macs, which, by the way, are still not quite perfect — a little too stubborn, still (stubborn is a descriptor I just made up and it simply means that the texture is hard and a little resistant, like the apple doesn’t want you to bite into it yet).

If sweet’s your thing, the Chenango Strawberry is toward the end of its harvest, but they’re a nice, sweet, mild apple. Nice fragrance; some say it’s rose-like. They’re also an oddly shaped apple, kind of like a football cut in half — and then while you’re at it, cut off the very tip, too.

The losers for the week were the Blenheim Orange (probably the prettiest apple at the stand, but with a taste a lot like a Golden delicious. I just can’t forgive the Deliciouses yet. They have some nice children, but I simply cannot trust the parents.) and the Cano Red (which I may be spelling wrong. The woman at the apple stand didn’t have her apple signs up yet. That’s how early I get there!).

I’ll give both of the losers another chance, but the Blenheim is just not the apple for me, I suspect, and the Cano Red is just not an eating apple. It might be good for baking, but that’s a different column.

Hell, let’s be honest. That’s a different columnist.

Until next week . . .

Well, I almost got fired for not meeting my deadline, but for the time being, I still have my job at Apple Enthusiast Magazine. (I think they’re a little desperate for columnists.) So, without further ado. . .

Like any reviewer, I’m biased. I tend toward apples that have a little more complexity of flavor than your typical grocery store varieties. Not that grocery store apples are all bad. Come February, I’ll be craving apples so much that I’ll settle for anything that isn’t mealy. But grocery store varieties tend to be fairly uniform. A grocer wants big, hearty apples with a crisp texture. They need to be able to survive shipping, which means they shouldn’t bruise easily, and they need to have a long shelf life, which means that consumers won’t be all that attuned to the subtleties of the ripening process.

Of course, all of the above is true of most produce. So why pine for apples? Simple. Because they’re there. Recent movements in food consumption have been toward local, slow food. And though the growing food shortages are providing us all with good reason to eat what’s grown nearby, I do it for a more selfish reason: taste. When you can eat food that doesn’t have the shelf life of enormous Braeburns or the toughness of Granny Smiths, you’re bound to find some great stuff.

That said, let’s delve right into the Pink Pearls. These gems are great. They’re not pucker-your-face sour, but they are very pleasantly tart, with a slight grapefruit aftertaste. And they have a distinctively pink flesh, which is also fun.

Last week, I made a big fuss over Cox’s Orange Pippin, whose vitamin C content is helping me through a small cold. This week, having purchased five pounds of them, I’m noticing that refrigeration detracts a little from the nuances of flavor. Still, the Pippins are great, and I’ve discovered another apple that has a similar mixture of sweet and sour: Jonagrimes. Jonathan apples make good parents, and the Jonagrimes variety is one of the many children of the Jonathan.

From here, we can go in one of two directions: toward the more mainstream apples or toward the “acquired taste” apples. Let’s start mainstream. Cortlands are a nice neutral-tasting apple. They’re a little softer in texture than the rest of this week’s picks, but they act as nice palate-cleaners. Cortlands are this week’s cereal apples.

Wealthy’s have been around for a while now, but I didn’t get around to tasting them until this week. They’re not bad. Again, a little softer in texture. And they taste a little like white grape juice.

The real crowd-pleaser, though, is the Twenty Ounce Pippin, which you might imagine would simply be a Cox’s Orange Pippin on steroids. But no. The Twenty Ounce Pippin is indeed larger than the Cox’s, but it doesn’t have the same array of flavor. It is, however, a fine apple in its own right — very crisp and a touch more seasoned than your grocery store varieties. Apparently great for cooking, they’re also very good eaten cold.

The “acquired taste” apples are the Calville Blanc d’Hiver and the Cort Pendu Plat. The Calvilles are green and kind of bumpy. They look like rocks that decided to become apples. I bought them because a fellow apple nerd at the farmer’s market stand claimed they were his favorites. I tasted a sample, which exposed a fruit with a tart almost wine-like sophistication to it, like something French cooks would like. And what do you know? French cooks like it. Apparently, so did Thomas Jefferson. But the ones I brought home just tasted like severely unripe Granny Smiths. So the jury’s still out on the Calville’s.

The Cort Pendu Plat’s have an equally cumbersome name (Why, France, why? It’s like naming a baby Francois-Alexandre!). And their taste? Well, not quite equally cumbersome. They leave your mouth quite dry, which seems to be requisite of gourmet things, and they have a pretty wild-apple feel to them. They’re not as tart as the Pink Pearls, but there is nothing sweet about them either. I guess that’s called acidic.

So there you have it. My picks for the week: Pink Pearls, Jonagrimes, and Twenty-Once Pippins. Will the Calville Blanc d’Hivers and the Cort Pendu Plat’s end up being the coffee of the apple world? I’ll give them another try next week to see how they’re progressing. But patience is a must when it comes to local foods, all of which deserve second chances.