An Apple Cake from Kyrgyzstan

One of the benefits of being an ESL teacher is that students sometimes share foods and recipes from their native countries. We usually have a potluck about once a semester, and some days students just happen to bring in some food to share.  Whenever there is a dish I particularly enjoy, I do my best to get the recipe from the student.  As I generally teach the lower level learners, from literacy level to beginning low, this can sometimes be a challenge.  Occasionally, as with this recipe for apple cake, the directions are simple and straightforward enough that writing the recipe is not difficult at all.

Until recently I had been teaching a small group of students in a makeshift classroom on a troubled high school campus.  The idea behind the class is that I would teach the parents of struggling students who would then realize the value of education.  Unfortunately, most parents who have children who aren't doing well in school probably don't really give a damn.  And the majority of those parents are native speakers of English.  Many immigrants may be struggling with the language, but one of the primary reasons they have come to the United States is get an education for their children.  Among the few students the class attracted, one was a parent of a child at the high school. Ironically, Fatimah--not her real name--recognized the school was not very good and was doing all she could to get him transferred to another school. 

Fatimah is a middle-aged woman from Kyrgyzstan.  Her father was Tartar and her mother Russian.  In Kyrgystan she was a businesswoman, operating a shop that sold Swarovsky crystal.  Although her husband has been here several years and is currently working on an MA at the local university, Fatimah and her children have just been here since last August. 

Most of the nearly 300,000 Russian speaking immigrants in the greater Sacramento area are evangelical Christians.  Although I have had many students from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan (as well as Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova), Fatimah is the first Muslim student I have had from one of the former Soviet republics.  While many students from the northern countries have a dour, almost humorless affect, Fatimah, like many other students I've had from the "Stans", has a very upbeat and cheerful outlook.

Tattoos are rare among the Russian speaking immigrants, save for the occasional crude army tat that some men have.  Fatimah has a prominent abstract tattoo of intertwining geometrical shapes on her left shoulder.  Curious, I asked her about tattoos in Kyrgyzstan.  She told me that while some younger people have them, most people don't approve.  She got hers a few years ago, when her husband was over here and she was still in Kyrgyzstan.  "I like," she said, "so I get.  I don't care what people think.  My husband very surprised when he see. 'Why?,' he ask. I tell him I think it's beautiful, so I get.  I am 35 years old when I get.  I old enough to do what I like. My son not like, no understand.  My daughter happy, smiling, says it beautiful."

Last week this class was shifted to the morning, allowing me to return to a much larger class at the adult school.  Even though I am pleased not to have to travel between schools anymore, not to have to tell students that they couldn't come to class until the school completed a criminal background check on them, not to have to lock up whiteboard markers and erasers, and to have a regular class of more than a handful of students in a real classroom, I felt bad abandoning those students. 

On the last day of the class, Fatimah brought an apple cake she made.  It's one she makes frequently for her family, she said.  Apples, flour, eggs, and sugar, it is made without oil or butter.  Still warm from the oven, it was a delightfully moist, not too sweet cake.  It was a lovely treat on a bittersweet ending to the class. 

Oil-free Apple Cake

3 to 4 apples, peeled and thinly sliced

3 to 4 eggs, beaten

1 cup of all purpose flour, sifted

3/4 to 1 cup of sugar

(I added about 1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg)

Preheat oven to 350º F.  Line the bottom of an 8-inch round cake pan with parchment paper.

Mix apples with sugar, using less sugar for sweeter apples, more for tarter apples.  Stir in beaten eggs.  Stir in flour and mix well.  Pour batter into the prepared cake pan.  Bake 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool.  Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar and serve warm or at room temperature.

French Apple Tart--Tarte aux Pommes

The hard part of maintaining a food blog is not the work involved, which is considerable, it's finding and establishing the rhythm of cooking, taking the pictures, writing, and posting.  It takes time to find that rhythm while still balancing the other demands in one's life: work, love, friends, household chores, and alcohol. I might be able to put off doing some chores, but that evening cocktail is not to be trifled with.  This is why most of my posts are written early in the morning, usually several hours before school starts.

Like anything that demands a certain amount of discipline, running, for example, or studying a foreign language,  any break in the routine of maintaining the blog makes it that much more difficult to get back into the rhythm of posting.  It's always easy to find an excuse to put off writing up a post, to find something else that needs to be done, an additional hour of sleep perhaps, or an episode or two of 30 Rock that you hadn't seen yet.  Having found myself in a work-and-state-of-affairs-of-educational-funding-in-California-induced-funk, I decided I needed a brief break from blogging.  I didn't realize how difficult it would be to pick it up again.  It's like Michael Phelps after a few weeks of hitting the bong and then jumping back into the water.  Whoa! Dude, 100 meters seems like a mile!

Tarte aux pommes is an elegant looking, relatively simple and straightforward apple pie.  Although it holds no candle to my mom's apple pie, it is a very delicious dessert.  The apples are not masked by an excess of sugar or cinnamon as sometimes happens in apple pies; they are front and center in this tarte.  A fan of thinly sliced apples rest on a bed of a lightly sweetened purée of sautéd apples.  It seemed a fitting dessert for our book club's discussion of Parrot and Olivier in America.

For the crust, I used the recipe from The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook.  It really is, as advertised, the perfect pie crust.  Don't use a food processor to do this.  You can, but by the time you do the clean up, what's the point?  This is something that can be done so easily in a bowl with a fork. 

The Perfect Pie Crust

(adapted from The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook)

1 cup unsifted all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 TBS chilled, unsalted butter, cut in 6 to 8pieces
1/4 cup shortening, chilled, also cut in pieces
3 to 4 TBS ice water (I use a cocktail shaker to chill the water and easily pour a little at a time.)

Mix together the flour and salt.  Cut in butter.  Then cut in shortening.  Sprinkle with the ice water, a tablespoon or so at a time and stir.  Add just enough water so the mixture is moist enough to gather together in a ball.

Wrap the ball of dough in a sheet of plastic wrap and press into a CD sized disk.  Chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface.  Place into a 9-inch tart pan.  Prick the bottom of the crust with a fork.  Line the shell with parchment paper and fill with dried beans or pie weights.
Bake in a pre-heated 425º oven for 10 minutes.  Remove the parchment paper and weights, and bake for another 3 to 5 minutes until the bottom is lightly browned.  Allow to cool before adding the apples.

 

I used two varieties of apples for the filling.  I used golden Mutsu for the purée, and Granny Smith for the top.  Any good, tart apples would work.

To make the purée, core, peel and slice three to four apples.  Sauté the apples with  a tablespoon of butter, a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkle of cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of panko breadcrumbs and about a 1/4 cup of sugar, more or less to your taste. Cook until the apples are soft enough to mash with a fork.  Mash into a chunky purée and cool.

Core, peel, and slice another 3 apples for the top of the tart.  You want the slices to be a uniform thickness.  Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet and saute the slices until just slightly softened, three to five minutes. 

Spread the purée of apples on the cooled crust.  Fan the slices of apples in a decorative pattern on top of the purée.  Sprinkle with several tablespoons of sugar and bake in a 375º oven for around 25 minutes, until apples are soft and lightly brown. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

This tart is best served the day it is baked, but I found that it still tasted very good the next day.

Indonesian Spiced Apple Caramel Bars

My wife has taken up knitting with a small group of ESL teachers a few Sundays a month. This allows me to watch football without too much interference. However, I'm also responsible for providing sustenance for the group. Last week it was savory pies with a butternut squash and leek filling. This week it's apple caramel bars with a coconut cream caramel spiced with star anise and cinnamon. Although I don't make a lot of desserts, I had been wanting to see what caramel sauce would be like if it were made with coconut cream instead of whipping cream. I also wanted to make something with apples for this month's Weekend Wokking. This recipe is for Weekend Wokking hosted by Momgateway.

I wanted apple caramel bars with a little bit of an Indonesian flavor. The base and topping are from a recipe that I tweaked from Cook's Illustrated. I had to look around to find a recipe that wasn't simple a shortbread base. I wanted the oatmeal and nuts to complement the apple filling. Macadamia nuts not only have more of a tropical flavor, they also were the nuts I had on hand. Although this was a little sweet for my taste, I thought they were a very tasty bar and would certainly be a hit with kids.

Indonesian Spiced Apple Caramel Bars

Base and Topping

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped dry roasted macadamia nuts (unsalted)
3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks) cut into small pieces

Mix dry ingredients together. Cut butter into the mixture until you have a coarse, mealy texture. Pat two thirds of this into a 9-inch square baking pan lined with parchment paper. (Make sure the parchment paper extends above the edges of the pan so you can lift it out easily after baking.)

Coconut Caramel Sauce

2 star anise
1 3 inch piece of cinnamon
50 grams of palm sugar (gula jawa)
100 grams of light brown sugar
2 TBS water
2/3 cup of coconut cream

In saucepan stir together star anise, cinnamon, sugars and water. Bring to a simmer over medium low heat. Simmer about five minutes. Add coconut cream. The solution will bubble up vigorously. Stir the sauce and lower the heat.

Apple Filling
5 medium sized apples (I used 3 Granny Smith and 2 Fuji)
Coconut caramel sauce
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Peel, slice and cut apples into pieces about an inch long and 1/4 inch thick. Sprinkle with spices and pour caramel sauce over to coat.

Assembling and Baking the Bars
Preheat the oven to 375º. Spread apple filling over the prepared base. Sprinkle reserved topping over the filling. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for at least 15 minutes before lifting out of the pan with the parchment paper. Cut into 12 rectangles.

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