Good morning! Today we have for you:
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A sheet-pan chicken dinner for apple season
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And a beautiful fall salad with apples, Cheddar and crispy sage (did we mention we have apple recipes today?)
What does the start of apple season make you think of? Is it the buttery, caramelized scent of an apple pie wafting from the oven? Or do you daydream about going apple picking, filling baskets with red, yellow and green fruit? For me, it’s the first bite of a new-crop apple, crisp as a celery stick, nearly as juicy as a peach and bracingly tangy.
It also immediately brings to mind a moment in the classic Beverly Cleary kids’ series “Ramona.” Ramona Quimby, the 4-year-old protagonist, hides in the basement from her big sister, Beezus, who is supposed to be minding her, and takes exactly one bite of each new-season apple in a crate she finds, tossing the apples aside as she goes.
When Beezus is scandalized, Ramona is ready with an irrefutable response: “But the first bite tastes best.”
Unruffled, their mother uses the despoiled apples to make a very large batch of applesauce. And Ramona is so contrite that she eats all her carrots at dinner without complaint.
Since I first read that book as a kid, I think of Ramona every time I take the first bite of a new apple. Then, of course, I finish it because the entire apple’s awfully good.
So what’s your favorite part of apple season? Let me know at [email protected].
In the meantime, I’ll be using some of my best apples to make Colu Henry’s sheet-pan chicken with apples, fennel and onions, in which fruit and fowl are seasoned with fennel and rosemary. It’s a savory salute to a crisp and redolent season, good from the first bite to the last.
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