Author Archives: marinaberger

Alphabet Soup!

Autumn Giles of Autumn Makes & Does has started a new podcast called Alphabet Soup, a podcast about food and words. Autumn graciously asked to interview me for the third episode, and it was so much fun! We covered a lot of ground: Salt Salon, short stories, J.D. Salinger, neuroscience, Proust, blackberries, tea parties, etc, etc.

I really enjoyed our chat. Listening to the episode just now, I realized that I haven’t actually heard the poem Blackberry Eating read in a really long time (not counting the times I read it aloud). It’s a delightful-sounding poem.

Autumn writes a great summary of the episode here.

You can listen to the interview here: Alphabet Soup Podcast — OR  you can just subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. In fact, you should do just that.

a podcast about food & words

a podcast about food & words

Apple Crumble

I’ve been getting a lot of apples and pears in my CSA. A LOT. A friend of mine invited me over to her house to break the Yom Kippur fast, so I decided to bring an Apple Crumble Pie. This recipe is for a very large (13 x 9 inches) tray of Apple Crumble, but I decided to divide the filling between a 9-inch (alas, store-bought) piecrust and a 10-x-7-inch baking dish.

I think that this recipe is an amalgamation of a few different apple pie and apple crisp recipes I had looked up last year. It’s really easy to play around with it and figure out your ideal combination of flavors. I, predictably, decided to sweeten the filling with sucanat, as it has become one of my favorite natural sweeteners because of its rich molasses flavor. You can, of course, substitute sugar. Our CSA bag has included a variety of apples, so I used whatever was in the bag: Cortland, Macintosh, Golden Delicious, Empire. I like the variety of flavors and textures that result from combining different varieties of apples, making each bite a bit of a surprise.

Apple Crumble or Apple Crumble Pie

Ingredients

Topping:

  • 2 ½ cups old-fashioned oats
  • 1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
  • 1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes

Filling:

  • 4 pounds mixed apples
  • 2/3 cup sucanat
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Vanilla ice cream

Procedure

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Lightly grease a 13-x-9-x-2-inch glass baking dish.

Mix oats, brown sugar, and flour in a bowl.  Add butter and rub in with fingertips until topping comes together in moist clumps. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover; chill.)

Mix all filling ingredients in large bowl to coat apples.  Transfer to baking dish.  Sprinkle topping over.

Bake crumble until apples are tender and topping is brown and crisp, about 55 minutes.  Cool slightly.  Spoon warm crumble into bowls.  Serve with ice cream.

Note: If you’re baking this recipe in a pie or 2 smaller baking dishes, check on it after about 40 minutes. You don’t want the crumble to burn.

Ready for the oven.

NY Locavore Challenge

From the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York’s website:

The NY Locavore Challenge is a month-long campaign aimed at engaging consumers across the state in eating local organic foods.  The goal for this campaign is to educate consumers about how to make healthy and ethical food choices, cook with in-season, local organic foods, while supporting local sustainable farms and food businesses.

Our 2011 goal is to involve 5,000 people in this year’s challenge, and bring the concepts of local, organic and sustainable more into the forefront of the general public’s minds.

This year’s program is versatile, fun and FREE!  Participants have the option of signing up for either a Bite-Sized, a Meal-Sized or a Feast-Sized challenge, and within these challenge scopes choose from a variety of different mini-challenges or events to participate in.

REGISTER ONLINE!

Why Local?

I’ll be on this panel discussing local food this Monday. Come check it out!

Join the Brooklyn Bridge CSA and Pursue on Monday, August 8th at 61 Local to talk about the local food movement, why it’s important, and how to support it. We will be hearing from leaders in the community about their  answers to the question, “Why local?” and what it means particularly for our food system. Come for the conversation, stay for the brews and snacks!