Apple Crumble and Thoughts of Home
It’s strange that after years of complaining about the bleak, Scottish weather, now that we find ourselves in almost perpetual sunshine, it turns out that I miss the cold. The clocks have gone back here in Sydney and, whereas back home this would mean markedly darker evenings and thoughts turning to casseroles, clementines and Christmas, on this side of the world it happens in April. There’s no anticipation of the crunch of frost underfoot or the first flurry of snowflakes. No digging out the winter woollies and adjusting the central heating timer. It’s still warm enough to go to the beach but it might be a tad cold in the sea. This Southern-Hemisphere living takes some getting used to…
To allay the sudden feelings of homesickness brought about by reading Nigel Slater’s excellent ‘The Kitchen Diaries’, I decide to make a crumble. The aroma of apples baking under a sweet blanket of sugar, butter and flour can do nothing but alleviate the symptoms and soothe the soul.
The last few times I have made crumble, the filling has been dense and sticky but a little lacking in juices for my liking. This time I decide to mix in a large handful of the blueberries lying hitherto forgotten in the back of the freezer. Their deep purple oozings mix rather prettily with the pale apple flesh. I am under strict instructions from Pete to make the crumble extra thick (it’s his favourite part), but you may feel you want more of a dusting than a drift. Ordinarily I would serve this with a dollop of crème fraîche (a steal at only $15 a tub from David Jones food hall), but I settle for good vanilla ice-cream instead.
5 Granny Smith apples (or any other apple you fancy)
Generous handful of berries, fresh or frozen (optional)
150g unsalted butter (cold)
1 tsp baking powder
170g plain flour
About 5 dessert spoons of caster sugar (if it’s vanilla sugar then all for the better)
1 dessert spoon brown or Demerara sugar for the top (optional)
Vanilla ice-cream or (wickedly) fresh whipped cream to serve
I peel, core and chop the apples before tossing them in a saucepan with about 40g of the butter, and sprinkle a generous 2 tablespoons of the caster sugar over the top. I’m miffed that I no longer have a jar of vanilla sugar sitting on my counter; it’s so handy whenever vanilla essence is called for in a recipe. Get one of those large glass jars with the rubber seal, fill it with caster sugar, fling in a slightly bruised vanilla pod or two and you’re away. Just keep topping up the sugar as you use it – it only takes a couple of days to infuse. Oh, and you’ll need to shake it from time to time.
Anyway, I cook down the apples in their buttery juices for about 7 minutes (I like them smooshy in crumble) and then fling in the blueberries and give a gentle stir until all is vibrant. I tip this into an available deep pie dish and set about making the crumble. The remaining butter is cubed and added to the flour and baking powder in a bowl and then rubbed lightly between thumb and forefingers to create ‘breadcrumbs’. I vaguely recall doing this in a food processor and it working equally as well, but today it’s therapeutic to stand massaging the ingredients for a while. Not to mention the fact that the food processor is still back in the UK. Three scant tablespoons of caster sugar get mixed into the crumbs and then all gets scattered on top of the filling. The brown sugar can be added to the top to give a final crust, but sometimes I find that it’s sweet enough already. It’s all a matter of taste. Bake in the oven at 190 C for about 35 minutes. The result? Comfort food extraordinaire!
