“Good cooking is when things taste of what they are,” said the French gastronomist Curnonsky. But how do you get an ingredient to taste like itself, or more like itself, especially when it doesn’t have a lot of flavor to begin with?
This is the dilemma of the cook suffering from the midwinter doldrums, when very little is really fresh and local, and many of the “winter” ingredients sold in stores are really fall ingredients that have been languishing in cold storage for months, losing much of their natural flavor.
One of the ways to do it is by what we professional chefs call “reinforcing” its flavor. For example, if you’re making a fresh fennel soup and you want the soup to scream fennel, you might use concentrated ingredients like anise- flavored liqueur or dried fennel seed along with the fresh bulb fennel. Or if you’re making a mustard dressing, you might use mustard seed or cold-pressed mustard oil along with your jar of Dijon mustard.
A quick and easy way to reinforce the flavor of apples, which tend to lose their bright flavor when they have been sitting in cold storage for too long, is by adding some reduced apple juice. By boiling down apple juice until it is thick and syrupy, you concentrate the flavor and intensify both the sugar and the acidity.
This Apple Ginger Purée is really simplicity itself. The fresh apples are sweated in butter along with onions and ginger, and then reduced apple juice is folded in at the end.
I like to serve this purée with sautéed trout and a salad of pecans and arugula, though it is just as good with a pork chop.
Apple Ginger Purée
Makes about 5 cups.
Ingredients
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup minced onions
1 tablespoon minced ginger
6 apples (preferably Braeburn), peeled, cored and cut into ½-inch dice
1 quart apple juice
Salt and pepper
Directions
In a 2-quart pot, melt one tablespoon of the butter over low-medium heat. Stir the onions into the butter and add a pinch of salt. Sweat the onions for 10 minutes and add the ginger. Sweat the ginger for 3 minutes and add the apples, another pinch of salt and the remaining butter. Cover the pot with a circle of parchment paper and cook until the apples are very tender, about 30 minutes.
While the apples are cooking, place the apple juice in a large sauté pan and reduce over high heat to cup. Do not allow the apple juice to caramelize or burn. Transfer the apple juice to a small bowl.
Place the cooked apple mixture and any liquid in the pot in a blender. Blend until smooth, about 2 minutes. Fold in the reduced apple juice and adjust the seasoning. Chill until ready to use.
To serve, warm it over low heat or microwave it.
