Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Apples got the blues, honey

I love a challenge, particularly when it comes to cooking. Sometimes the best challenges come in the form of contests that I enter.

In this case, it was a Kitchen Play contest sponsored by The US Apple Association. The deal with these contests is that you have to recreate/revise/riff on a recipe that another blogger created for the month's menu, using the sponsor's product.

In this case, the recipe was for the appetizer course and it was an apple and blue cheese tart.

Radical that I am, I eliminated the tart and kept the apples, blue cheese, and honey. It's an interesting combination. I almost added a few other things, then came to my senses. This made a perfect little one-bite appetizers for dinner.

The honey I used was a local raw honey, and it's very thick. Good stuff.

No amounts on this recipe - make as much or as little as you like, and adjust the flavor the way you like. The amount of honey you're going to want depends in part on how tart the apples are. You want a balance, so it's not too sweet, but not overly tart.

Apples Got the Blues, Honey

Apples
Lemon or Fruit Fresh
Blue cheese
Honey

Peel the apples and slice - you can make thin wedges, or whatever shape amuses you. Drop the sliced apples into cold water with lemon juice or a bit of Fruit Fresh to keep it from browning.

When you're ready to assemble, remove the apples from the water, and top with a bit if blue cheese and a small drizzle of honey.

Serve.
Yum

3 comments:

Fran Amenábar Ch. said...

I love the taste of the fruit with cheese.
Greetings from Chile

Pork Belly said...

My professor brought in a batch of Pixie Crunch (it's a great apple cultivar, although it's relatively new, but I think this apple will become the next Honeycrisp in roughly a decade) from our university's fruit orchard that were pretty good (My university's agriculture department is the biggest in the state), and I'm hoping to get like 2 dozen or so freshly picked apples next week from them.

They told me that since the purpose of the orchards is research, they're actually not allowed to sell their fruits (the local farmers actually complained about it when they use to sell to the public), and many of them are thrown away. I was absolutely horrified when he first told me about it, especially since they're the ones who publish techniques and information that other apple farmers in the area use so they're some of the best fruits growers around. My horticulture professor who oversees the fruit farm told me that fruits, especially apples, have been his passion for the past 30 or so years.

Anyways, I should have some amazing apples next week, and I've been wanting to make something like this forever (I'm going to add walnuts). I'm thinking about getting real fancy with this by dicing the blue cheese and walnuts together, forming them into sticks, then with thinly sliced apples, then wrap the entire thing in puff pastry, and then I'll have blue cheese and walnut wrapped apples stuffed into puff pastry sticks.

I can't wait to get these apples, and I'm going to volunteer at the fruit farm during the next growing season. There are so many varieties of peaches, pears, and apples (it's an experimental farm after all), and even though I won't get payed in cash, I fully expect to be taking home bushels of fruit next harvest season.

What other recipes would you recommend for apples? I saw the apple and pear tart recipe from a week ago, and I plan to give it a shot this weekend. Although I don't plan to use the pears, and I might add a touch of spicy, green chile (probably a Serrano and Jalapeno mixture), but I really like how the recipe doesn't overload on cinnamon like so many recipes.

Donna Currie said...

Sounds like you're getting a great deal on fruit. When you can't think of anything else, home made apple sauce and apple butter is great. I've got an apple tart recipe going up tomorrow, as well. No cinnamon at all.

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