Saturday saw us out in Parkdale with friends to check out the heirloom apple/pear/Asian pear tasting day at Kiyokawa Family Orchards. A fave from last autumn, we wanted to take our friends to enjoy tasting the many varieties they grow there as well as pick a bunch to make applesauce. Turned out the apples had all been picked, but we still had a great time trying many varieties we’d never heard of before. 31 pounds of fruit later (that’s just us), we were loaded up and off to our next stop.

Rasmussen Farms saw us leave with several fun gourds, a couple of pounds each of fresh, local walnuts & hazelnuts, ornamental corn, and 2 smallish Hubbard squash. Yes, I know we have a bunch of these in the basement, but these are the blue type we didn’t grow. Oh yes, and pumpkins. There are 7 of them on our front steps. 6 of them Christie and I picked out. What can I say, we were having fun.

Into this collection of squash and apples arrived our first box from Organics to You. I offered to take it from the deliver guy, but he then offered to put inside for me because, “its heavy”.

I ripped off the tape and opened the box to see a lovely bunch of red kale, some baby bok choy, radishes, chioggia beets, chunky carrots, onions, garlic, a huge head of broccoli, a head of purple cabbage bigger than my head (seriously), 2 big leeks, a half pint of kiwi berries and more fruit. 4 more apples, 3 more Asian pears and 3 red Bartlett pears. Uh yeah.

One good sized box of produce and a fridge already filled to the brim with mostly apples…

Yep, time to make the apple sauce. I chopped up 8 quarts of mixed varieties of apples and a few pears that needed to be used. Cooked until we had a chunky sauce and added the zest & juice from a medium sized Meyer lemon. That’s it. Nothing else needed for that much deliciousness. I’m waiting on the water in the canner to boil, 20 minutes in the bath then we have lovely applesauce for the rest of the year and to go into the little gift baskets we’re planning to do this winter for people.

That helped some. While the apples were doing the cooking thing I threw some Great Northern beans into the pressure cooker. Drained them when done and cleaned out the cooker to make soup. Into the pot I sauteed a bunch of garlic and most of the leeks, celery & Russet potatoes were added. Water, salt, pepper, and a sprig of fresh rosemary in the covered cooker, on high pressure for 8 minutes. Release valve, add in half the red kale that was delivered today along with half the white beans. Simmer with salt, some nutritional yeast, and more pepper. Serve with croutons. Yum!

The other half of the beans, more garlic and the remaining leeks have been stewed together with a little rosemary sprig, olive oil, tarragon, and some diced celery. This gives a lot more flavor to the Great Northern beans, which are not Christie’s favorite. These have been set aside for later this week when I’m going to revisit the whole squash/polenta baked casserole, but with the white beans and some fresh basil pesto.

By this evening’s end there will be lots of applesauce in jars, soup in the fridge, and some progress made towards Wednesday or Saturday’s dinners. I’ve had some ideas about the cabbage and how to use up all the produce that’s coming along with what we had already here. Right now I’m really enjoying the challenge of making food for us primarily based on what is brought each week.

Christie and I went on a field trip to the aforementioned Kiyokawa Orchards at the beginning of the month. We got a map, directions, a box, and a little red wagon and set out to pick apples from the u-pick orchard.

In short time we had bags of Elstar, Gala, Empire, Swiss Delight, and a couple of other varieties. Once back in Portland we split up the pounds of apples and put them in the fridge. Then we both marveled at the sheer number of apples we had. Piles of them.

I love apples, truly they are my favorite fruit. I spend much of the spring months missing the really good apples that only around in late summer and autumn. Sure, there’s some that are still from local orchards and keep well into spring and early summer (like a Pink Lady), but I really miss the crispness of an Elstar or Newtown Pippen. Well, now I had piles of glorious crisp delicious apples.

Having just made the apple preserves a week before I looked through my copy of the Ball Blue Book and was shocked to discover just how little there is to making applesauce. This news was confirmed by the lovely folks at Kiyokawa who were offering samples of fresh made, chunky applesauce in their market.

In order to make sufficient room for the newly picked apples in Christie’s fridge we set to chopping up all the ones she already had in the fridge from the Farmers Market, all Honeycrisps. Sugar is optional so we went further optional by using agave. I added some bottled lemon juice as well since we weren’t going to be canning any. All this and a little water went onto the stove, some time later, when the flat smelled delicious, we added cinnamon and enjoyed a bowl of piping hot, amazing applesauce.

I immediately wanted to play around further with the applesauce idea having discovered how simple it is. I made a point to I use a mix of ALL the varieties of apples we picked at the orchard. I liked the lemony note the bottle juice brought to the batch, but wanted fresh and also to try using the zest of the lemon. I had loved the cardamom in the preserves, so added that as well and the results were 2.5 quarts of incredibly tasty applesauce!

This brings me to the recipe!

6 1/2 pounds of apples (about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 per quart)
1/4 cup dark agave syrup
1 teaspoon powdered cardamom (or less, to taste)
1/2 teaspoon powdered cinnamon (or less, to taste)
1/2 cup water (or less)
juice and zest of 1 lemon

Wash, drain, peel, core and roughly chop all of the apples. Cook apples in a large saucepan with just enough water so they do not stick. When apples soften and break down use a potato masher, whisk or even a fork to help process the apples into sauce. Add the agave, lemon juice, zest and powdered spices. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

At this point you can put the applesauce into jars, let it cool, then refrigerate if it will be eaten quickly.

If you’d like a little chunkier applesauce reserve one or two of your apples. Once the other apples begin to breakdown into sauce finely chop the reserved apple, add to the sauce pan, and cook until the newly added apples have just softened.

If you want to can the applesauce, here are the directions from the Ball Blue Book:

Bring applesauce to boil (212 degrees Fahrenheit). Maintain this temperature as you ladle the hot applesauce into hot canning jars. Leave 1/2 headroom. Remove any air bubbles. Adjust two-piece cap. Process pints and quarts 20 minutes in a boiling-bath canner.

The NYTimes had some recipes up related to Rosh Hashana that I emailed along to Gayle. One is a beef dish that she and I talked about how to make vegan. I haven’t tried that yet, but with the gorgeous bounty of apples from Kiyokawa Orchards I was prompted to make the Apple Preserves with Cardamon… with a twist. I made up a batch as described below to give to Lev & Gayle for Rosh Hashana.

Here’s the recipe that appears with that link above:

2 tart apples, like Granny Smiths, cored, peeled and quartered
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom or 3 whole pods, smashed.

Place apples in a medium heavy pan and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons water, plus other remaining ingredients. Bring to a slow simmer for about a half hour or until apples are soft.
Remove from heat and cover pan for 20 minutes. Serve immediately or transfer to a jar with a lid. Refrigerated, apples will keep for at least a week.

A few distinct changes I made in this recipe:

Well, first isn’t a change so much as an “oops”. I forgot to smash the cardamom pods. This meant I ended up adding the ground cardamom as well as having some whole pieces in there. I rather like cardamom, so I didn’t mind the whole pieces and think the black specks are rather dramatic, but Christie found them hot.

The cardamom was nice, but I also added about a 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon too.

I used 1 Honeycrisp and 1 Pink Pearl apple instead of two Granny Smiths. The varieties I used both are quite tart apples and I think far tastier than a Granny Smith. What happened was that the Pink Pearl cooked away into sauce. I ended up cooking it for a bit longer that suggested so the Honeycrisp would cook down a bit more. I also needed to reduce some of the water because…

Christie and I had picked fresh raspberries at a u-pick on Sauvie Island just before I made this so I was moved to throw about 1/4 cup of those into the mix. This added an additional tartness, but that wonderful summer berry note. It also turned the batch brilliant red — beautiful!

I haven’t talked to Lev & Gayle to ask if they enjoyed it. Not sure if the same issue with the cardamom seeds will surface. I must say that I liked it very much, ate it all up on toasted, sprouted wheat English muffins (and forgot a picture).