The week has passed Septemberily, arguing fiercely with itself about whether it should turn the heating on.
Yes, it’s autumn, so here’s a recipe for a really fantastic apple sauce.
You will need:
Kumar Sangakkara
Two spoonbills and a great white egret
A hard-working and diligent spouse
A metric fucktonne of apples (ok, let’s say a kilo)
A collection of appley spices in a muslin bag: I used a big cinnamon stick, four cloves, the rind of an orange and six juniper berries, but you’ll have better ideas than that.
Some good apple juice, say 400-500ml
4 tablespoons of soft brown sugar
Butter
A well-timed bout of selective amnesia
The first thing you need to do to make this apple sauce is to leave the house for a day of self-indulgence. This isn’t always possible for those of you in full-time employment, I understand, so my advice is to become self-employed as soon as possible and to establish a pattern of boss/employee dialogues something along these lines:
– Lev?
– Yes, Lev?
– Can I have the day off to go and watch Kumar Sangakkara bat?
– Yes, of course. Have fun.
So, you have your Kumar Sangakkara.
Other batsmen are available, but you wouldn’t choose any of them over him. There will be few opportunities to see him bat before he retires, and he’s never been on better form. He’s on 85 not out overnight, and you’re praying that he won’t fall early.
He doesn’t.
These are the good times, those couple of hours. Apple sauce is the furthest thing from your mind as you watch the great man caress the ball to all parts of the Oval. At one point he plays a shot so ineffably sublime you could swear you hear the ball murmur an appreciative ‘marvellous shot, that’ as it flies to the boundary.
Glowing with the inner warmth brought on by the timeless slow rhythm of county cricket, you go home to find that your industrious and diligent spouse has not only picked a metric fucktonne of apples up at the allotment, she has also peeled and cored them, tossed them in lemon juice, covered them in water and left them in the fridge in what you consider an unduly passive-aggressive way designed to highlight your own indolence.
Ignore them. The next morning, instead of making the apple sauce (or even doing some, you know, work), go birdwatching.
All the steps so far are absolutely intrinsic to the success of the sauce – don’t even consider leaving them out. You may of course substitute your own self-indulgent activities for Sangakkara- or spoonbill-and-great-white-egret-watching, but it’s the self-indulgence that will not only furnish you with much-needed respite from the hurly-burly of modern life but will also make the apple sauce (when you finally get round to making it) taste that much better.
So. The sauce.
You have your peeled, cored and roughly chopped apples. Go down on bended knee in praise and gratitude to your spouse. The positive vibes emanating from this act of marital harmony will seep into the apples and make them taste better.
Now pour the apple juice into a pan and put the appley spices, in their bag, into it. Bring to the boil, turn the heat down, and allow to simmer until reduced by at least half. Throw away the spices, making sure there aren’t any bitter clove-y bits left in the reduced juice. Bitter clove-y bits are to be eschewed at all costs.
Add the apples and brown sugar to the reduced juice. Turn well so everything’s coated, then cook, covered, on a very low heat, for as long as it takes to get a nicely reduced sludge. At this point the sauce will be good and tasty. A fine, upstanding apple sauce of the kind you could safely introduce to your grandmother.
Now here’s the important bit.
While the sauce is cooking, go away and do something else, completely forgetting that you’re cooking an apple sauce. Two (or possibly more) hours later, remember it, and rush down to the kitchen in a welter of perturbation and despair.
You will find that it’s caught on the bottom and has caramelised a bit. Now stir it all around, turn the heat up by one, and cook, uncovered, for at least another half hour. Then stir in some butter. You, and only you, know how much you use for this kind of thing, so that is exactly the right amount.
You now have an apple sauce that is the culinary equivalent of Kumar Sangakkara’s cover drive. You may choose to share it with your diligent and hard-working spouse. I leave that part entirely to you.
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