BOOK/A TABLE - This Applesauce Rules!

                   

A Prayer for Owen Meany* by John Irving was the first book that ever made me cry. Books had been making people cry for years, of course, but I never quite understood it growing up. Crying during a movie made more sense to me, the passivity of watching the drama unfold, you know? Reading is active—if distracted, you turn away, the reel jams, the celluloid melts, the story stops! Hardly a time for tears. Oh, the impatience of youth!

But when I read the extraordinary A Prayer for Owen Meany, I finally understood. Oh, the tears fell down like autumn windfall apples! 

I suppose it wasn’t surprising then that I cried again over Irving’s The Cider House Rules only a few months ago. The story centers on events surrounding an orphanage and hospital in the fictional town of St. Cloud’s in Maine (my homeland). There, women deliver unwanted babies (those ‘Princes of Maine’; those ‘Kings of New England’) or the women themselves are delivered from unwanted pregnancies. The book deliberately parallels David Copperfield as we follow Homer Wells’s journey—and indeed wonder whether or not this particular orphan will become the hero of his own life. 

There are also many pages devoted to apples, their cultivation (and rules of operating the cider house), as you might well imagine. But here, let’s start with the basics. Applesauce!

Following the loose instructions torn out of an old Bon Appétit, I have made Carla Lalli Music’s practically effortless recipe for perfect applesauce many times. She says, “As the apples transform, their skins surrender tannins and color to the sauce, and the fruit steams in its own juices, concentrating the flavors as the liquid simmers.” Doesn’t that sound just fantastic? 

And as Homer (our Prince of Maine and King of New England) observes, “...people will always eat apples...it must be a nice life.”

Applesauce
Adapted from a recipe by Carla Lalli Music, featured in Bon Appétit

Ingredients
A few apples; any kind that suits your fancy
A stick of cinnamon
Juice from 1 lemon
A scraped-out vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

Method
Halve the apples and add them to sturdy pot (enamel Le Creuset pots are great) with all the ingredients on medium-low. Add a 1/4 cup of water and let them be. When the rich aromas begin filling the kitchen, stir your apples to make sure they aren’t sticking—if they are, add a little more water.

The total simmering time should be about 45 minutes to yield a rosy, tender flesh. Transfer your batch to a food mill to catch any seeds or stems.

Serve warm. Or chilled!

*(For a deeper dive into A Prayer for Owen Meany, check out Fifth Business by Robertson Davies—Irving based Owen Meany on it.)