Food 16 Sep 2005 11:41 pm
local food: baked apples with honey and hazelnuts
I’ve been thinking I’d keep track of some things that you can make with only ingredients found in the Northwest. I’m not half as hard-core as some folks; I’ll include anything you can find at the farmer’s market here. I’ll cheat and use some spices and oils that don’t grow here, but probably not if the dish is built around them. (Eggplant oop, for instance, really requires that turmeric, imho.) More cheating: I reserve the right to include canned tomatoes. After all, tomatoes do grow here, and in a better world I would have canned some. (In a much better world, I’d have a lot of homegrown ripe tomatoes instead of this deluge of crummy green ones that probably won’t ripen.)
I cannot always make it to the farmer’s market, but I can work on learning to cook the things I’d find there. Eventually I’ll have a decent list of locavorous recipes, and perhaps our household will have Local Food Thursdays or something.
Previous posts that’d fit the bill: roasted beets,onion soup, simple vegetable soup.
For most people, the quintessential west-of-the-mountains ingredient is probably salmon; for me, it’s hazelnuts. Almost all of the country’s hazelnuts are grown in the Willamette Valley, and most of the rest are here in Western Washington. I usually get mine from Holmquist Hazelnuts, a farm up in Lynden.
Here’s a simple baked apple recipe good for a rainy fall day. I usually use organic Gala apples for this sort of thing; they are a nice manageable size. Every so often I’ve run across a really good organic Golden Delicious that hasn’t had all the taste bred out of it, and those are wonderful baked.
Baked apples with honey and hazelnuts
baking apples
roughly chopped hazelnuts
honey
cider (or water will do)Core the apples, but don’t go all the way through the blossom end. Remove a strip of peel from around the top of the apple to allow more steam to escape. Stuff the apples with chopped hazelnuts and drop a generous dab of honey on top of each apple.
Place apples in a pie pan or baking dish and pour cider into the pan to a depth of about 1/2 inch. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour, basting the apples occasionally, until the apples are tender.
You could, if you liked, toast the hazelnuts before stuffing the apples with them.
I always wind up chopping too many hazelnuts. That’s okay; they’re great on oatmeal.
on 17 Sep 2005 at 12:17 am 1.Josh said …
Mmm. Those stuffed apples are so, so tasty.
on 17 Sep 2005 at 5:02 am 2.Mris said …
When I was in Corvallis for the summer, I brought home bags and bags of hazelnuts. Salmon didn’t occur to me, although marionberries did. Still went with the hazelnuts, though. Mmmm, hazelnuts. I make apple bread with hazelnuts, which is also good.
on 17 Sep 2005 at 6:43 am 3.Devon said …
One plant (or family of plants) which isn’t native to the Northwest, but seems to thrive, is the mustard family. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, collard greens. There’s even a weed in that family that pops up in May and June, even though I’ve never tried to harvest it.
Also, I’ve heard from someone that a lot of the corn that makes it to dinner tables, comes from the Northwest. The bulk of the corn from the cornbelt actually goes into animal feed. Also raspberries do quite well in the NW. And milk.
So if we had a NW potluck I’d bring raspberry ice cream, corn and collard greens.
on 17 Sep 2005 at 11:30 am 4.Cam Sculpin said …
Mmm. You’d both be invited to my potluck.
If we consider the “foodshed” to include Washington east of the mountains, major crops would include wheat, lentils, chickpeas, and dry peas. If we had our hypothetical potluck on a cold day like the one we’re having here today, I might bring lentil soup with homemade thyme crackers.
on 17 Sep 2005 at 5:33 pm 5.Peter P said …
This sounds delicious. And very Autumnal.
on 08 Jan 2007 at 2:34 pm 6.Devon Girl said …
Loved the baked apples - Devon has great local apples and local food so we’re blessed! www.thelocalfoodcompany.co.uk