Fort Dodge Community Apple Orchard

Jeffrey and I like to visit the Fort Dodge Community Apple Orchard when we're visiting my parents.  Last year we were there too late to get any Paula Red apples, which are my favorite for apple pies.  This year we got the last of the crop;  they must be a very early apple.

We sampled the Honey Crisp and Honey Sweet apples.  The Honey Crisp is indeed a very crunchy apple, with a taste that's a bit sweeter than a Granny Smith.  The Honey Sweet was also crisp, and just like its name forecasts, is a very pleasant, sweet apple- perfect for eating straight out of hand.

We bought a big bag of Paula Reds, the "seconds".  These are apples that aren't totally cosmetically appealing, but work perfectly well in pies, crisps, and other baked apple desserts.  They are significantly cheaper than the "firsts".

My son wanted some tart eating apples, so we got him a small bag of Cortlands, which are good for both baking and eating raw.



These were VERY tempting.

The gift shop was brimming over with Halloween cheer!

I was disappointed that there weren't any tin goats for sale this year.  I missed out on my chance to get one on our visit last October.  I thought for sure that they'd carry them again, since one of the big attractions of the orchard is a goat playground, ruled by the billy goat Uncle Buck.  Uncle Buck is a hoot;  everybody loves watching him and his cohorts.  There were a few tin turtles, but it's just not the same.

Travelling the Pumpkin Trail

There was even a Frankenstein-green tin rabbit.

Actually sort of scary.

I liked these glossy ceramic mushrooms. 

I could pose these for my non-existent tin goat to eat.

We had a great time at the orchard, and picked up some of Jeffrey's favorite teas from Fortune Tea along with the apples.  On the off-chance that anyone from Community Apple Orchards reads this, here is my solitary request:  Bring back the tin Uncle Bucks!

P.S. Thanks for the apples, they're GREAT!

Pork Medallions with Apples and Sage

Pork and apples go great together.  Apple wood bacon is perhaps as good as bacon gets, while pork chops with applesauce is a comfort food classic.   With that delicious synergy in mind, I decided to toss together a quick, tasty pork-and-apples dish using tender, quick-cooking pork tenderloin medallions.

The result was, I'm happy to report, truly excellent.  The sauce was full of rich apple flavor, augmented with apple brandy and accented with a bit of cinnamon, but also quite savory due to chicken broth, onions and sage.  The pork medallions were perfectly cooked in just a couple minutes, and the quick browning made them flavorful but still moist and tender. 

I served the Pork Medallions with Apples and Sage with some baked squash and wild rice (I'll be presenting the recipes for those parts of the meal in a separate post).  Together, all this made for a really, really nice meal, plus some excellent leftovers that we enjoyed at work for the next couple days.

I don't have anything else other to say about this very basic and entirely satisfying recipe, other than if you try it out for yourself, I pretty much guarantee you'll be happy with the results. 

Pork Medallions with Apples and Sage

yield = 6 servings

2                   pork tenderloins (about 2 1/2 pounds total)
                     salt and pepper to taste
2                   tablespoons olive oil
2                   tablespoons unsalted butter
2                   Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1                   large yellow onion, chopped fine
1                   cup apple juice
6                   tablespoons apple-flavored brandy
1/4                teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2                cup low sodium chicken broth
2                   tablespoons chopped, fresh sage
1/3                cup heavy cream

Remove any silverskin and excess fat from the tenderloins.   Pat them dry with paper towels, then slice into 1/2 inch thick slices.  Pound slices until 1/4 inch thick and season on both sides with salt and pepper.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering.  Cook the pork medallions in batches, making sure to not crowd them too much.  Cook until browned (about 2 minutes), then flip and brown on the other side.  Transfer cooked medallions to a platter, cover with foil and repeat until all the pork medallions have been cooked.

Add the butter to the skillet and spread with spatula or spoon until melted.  Add the apple slices and chopped onion.   When the onions have started to brown, stir them and flip the apple slices to brown on both sides.  When the apple slices have softened on both sides, stir in the apple juice and brandy and sprinkle with cinnamon. 

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced to a syrupy texture, then add chicken broth and sage and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the broth is mostly reduced down.  Stir in cream and cook for a minute or so to heat through, then spoon sauce over the pork medallions and serve.

Community Apple Orchard - Fort Dodge, Iowa

Last weekend Jeffrey and I went to visit family in Fort Dodge.  We had a great time!  The Fort Dodge Farmer's Market is very good, and we were able to pick up a bunch of our new favorite squash, the red kuri.  These squash are a very deep orange-red and are shown on the far right in the picture below.  They're about the same size as the green acorn squash on the far left that you might be more familiar with. 

Red kuri are very flavorful and sweet, maybe just a bit sweeter than butternut squash.  They're great in soups and casseroles, and are the perfect size for stuffing.  I like to slice them in half and bake them in a 350 degree oven with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice.  Allow 1/2 to a whole squash per person. 

We also made time to go to the Community Apple Orchard, even though we were just there in September, because we like a variety of apples, and they don't all ripen at the same time. 

We were greeted by spooky tin scarecrows:

and less spooky tin billy goats (I love these!):

Isn't the fall color great?

Gourds, gourds, everywhere!

We bought a big bag of Haralson apples, because I want to try my hand at making apple sauce.  We got a good deal on the "seconds", which we were assured had never touched the ground.  They're just not cosmetically pretty.  Haralson apples are very crisp and tart - perfect for cooking and baking.  And the young man that helped us make our selection, which involved taste-testing several varieties of apples, was very helpful.  We were impressed that a teenager would know which apples would be best for the chunky applesauce I want to make!

The brown spots aren't bruises and won't affect the flavor at all!





Old-Fashioned Chicken and Noodles: Cheater's Method for an Easy Sunday Supper

Today Jeffrey and I both felt worn out.  It was just a really long week, and although Jeffrey had planned to cook something complicated tonight (General Tso's Chicken, and Hot and Sour Soup), we both just wanted some comfort food.  I suggested Chicken and Noodles served over potatoes, with steamed vegetables.  We still have plenty of apples from our apple orchard jaunt, so apple crisp seemed just right for a nice seasonal dessert.

We got home, and I put a large can of chicken stock on the stove and added a package of three chicken breast halves.  While the chicken cooked, I started peeling and slicing apples.  Meanwhile, Jeffrey made the crisp part of our dessert and got to play with the pastry blender.  We got it assembled and put it in the oven.  I removed the partially cooked chicken from the broth and set it on a platter to cool. 

I peeled about four large Yukon gold potatoes and since we didn't want to wait forever for them to cook, also sliced them.  Then I put them on to boil.  Jeffrey cut the warm chicken into cubes while I added the noodles to the chicken broth.  As soon as he finished cutting the chicken, it went into the noodle pot.

I washed some fresh broccoli and pared and cut up one carrot and put them in our rice cooker/vegetable steamer, then added seasoning and spices to the chicken noodles, along with a small additional can of chicken broth. 

When the potatoes were done, I drained the water, added a stick of butter (I know, that sounds like a lot!) and a little bit of milk, and mashed them right in the pan. 

Miraculously, everything was done when the apple crisp timer buzzed!

I call this the cheater's method because I used Reames frozen egg noodles instead of making them from scratch, and cut the potatoes up into slices instead of boiling them whole.  Side note:  Did you know Reames noodles were developed in Clive, Iowa?

Julianne's Chicken and Noodles

1 49-ounce can          low sodium chicken broth

2 pounds                    boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 16-ounce package   Reames frozen egg noodles

1 14.5-ounce can        low sodium chicken broth

5 teaspoons               L.B. Jamison's low sodium chicken flavored soup base

1 to 1 ½ teaspoons     fresh ground black pepper

½ teaspoon                dried parsley flakes

1/8 teaspoon             onion powder

1.  Heat the 49-ounce can of chicken broth over medium high heat.  Add chicken breast pieces and cook until chicken turns white.  Remove from stock and allow to cool.

2.  Add the frozen noodles to the hot broth and continue to cook.  When chicken is cooled, cut into bite-sized cubes.  When most of the liquid has boiled down, add the 14.5 ounce can of chicken broth, the chicken cubes, and all remaining ingredients.  Cook until the chicken and noodles are thickened as much as you like them.

Fast Mashed Potatoes

4-6 large                     Yukon gold potatoes

1 stick                         butter

splash of                      milk

Peel potatoes and if you're in a hurry, slice.  Cook in a small pot of boiling water until done.  Drain potatoes in a metal colander.  Melt butter in the cooking pot, and add drained potatoes.  Add a splash of milk and mash by hand using either a potato masher or a fork. 

Serve the Chicken and Noodles over hot mashed potatoes with a vegetable side of your choice.  Enjoy!

Julianne's Apple Crisp

This recipe came to me years ago from Kay Miller of Cherokee, Iowa.

4-5 large          tart apples

1 tablespoon      lemon juice

½ cup                white sugar

½ cup                butter

½ cup                brown sugar

1 cup                 flour

1 teaspoon         cinnamon

1 teaspoon         apple pie spice

½ teaspoon        nutmeg

1.  Peel apples and slice thinly.  Place into an 8-inch square glass baking dish.  Drizzle with the lemon juice, mix well with a spoon, and sprinkle the white sugar over all.

2.  Cut the remaining ingredients into fine crumbs with a pastry blender.  Pour over apple slices.  Bake 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

Batting .500

On Monday night, I decided to make two recipes I'd never tried before.  One, which sounded great and was quite straight-forward, came from an earlier edition of the Good Housekeeping Step by Step Cookbook, pictured below.  The other came from America's Test Kitchen Special Collector's Edition Best-Ever Recipes, which I've mentioned several times previously (and which you may well be tired of hearing about... but trust me, it really is that good). 



The easier recipe was Pork Chops with Apples and Cream - a very basic recipe, but with some nice extra features.  This is the dish I had in mind when purchasing the apple brandy a few days earlier.  The other was Potatoes Anna, a recipe that is pretty straight-forward in concept, but which I've read is notoriously tricky in the details.  This dish, which involves carefully layering thin potato slices in a hot skillet and letting them fry for a time before finishing them in the oven, has a high rate of failure on the last step, which is turning over the skillet to release the dish, such that what was the bottom of the arrangement of potato slices becomes the top of the dish when served.  When properly done, the presentation is quite nice, but oftentimes the potatoes stick in the pan, resulting in what might range from merely a somewhat-less-than-perfect presentation to a loose mess of fried potatoes.

The chops and apples cooked up wonderfully.  The nice, thick chops were moist and flavorful, the cream sauce was savory and the apples... well, they were the highlight of the dish.  They were tender and juicy, and had soaked up a lot of the brandy flavor.  The Potatoes Anna... well, not quite so successful.

The recipe called for the potatoes to be arranged in the skillet with the heat set at medium-low and allowed to fry for a total of 30 minutes from the time one starts to arrange the potatoes, then put in a very hot oven for another 25 minutes or so.  Our stove has settings ranging from 1 (Low) to 9 (High).  I figured 2 1/2 was a good, safe medium-low setting.  Turns out I was wrong. 

I figured I might have a problem when I could smell the potatoes starting to burn about 20 minutes into the frying.  I considered turning down the heat a bit at that point, but thought perhaps what I was smelling was just the potatoes getting a bit crispy on the bottom.  So I decided to let things play out.  I let the potatoes fry the suggested amount of time, then covered the skillet with foil, transferred it to the oven, already at 450 degrees, then cooked it as directed, first covered and then uncovered at the end. 

This was is the result.  The bottom layer was indeed burnt.  Well, actually, "burnt" isn't an adequate description.  Say, "charred to a completely dried crisp" and you're in the ballpark.  Or go with "turned to charcoal" and you're spot-on.  Really a shame, too, because it came out of the pan without a hitch, perfectly formed, no sticking at all.  My very first pass at this somewhat-difficult dish, and it would have been perfect, if not for the inedibly-burnt part.  Pretty big "if" though.

A tad overdone

I'm not sure if maybe our oven's settings are just a bit on the over-warm side, or perhaps this occurred because I prepared the dish in my new Lodge Logic skillet, which conducts heat really, really well.  Either way, though, I figured I'd learned something - one can, after all, learn as much or more from failures as from successes - and next time I make this, I'll start with the heat set at 2. 

I was worried this bit of learning might have come at the price of a ruined dinner, but thankfully that was not the case.  The story has a happy ending.

As it turns out, while the very top layer of the Potatoes Anna was completely inedible, it wasn't hard to remove the worst-burnt stuff (most of the top layer, as shown above), and the rest of the dish was really, really good... tender and creamy and wonderfully yummy.  And, as I wrote above, the Pork Chops with Apples and Cream turned out great.  Served up with some asparagus Juli steamed, it was still a really tasty dinner with good leftovers. 

I will be giving Potatoes Anna another try, though... and probably soon.

Apple Pie Jam

Recently I was listening to NPR and heard a great story about a blogger whose specialty is canning.  The best part about the story was listening to the sound jars make as they vacuum seal after their water bath.  That really brought back memories!  The blogger featured in the story  is Mrs. Wheelbarrow, and her blog was really interesting.  That set me off on an internet hunt for interesting or unusual jam recipes.  I found two I really wanted to try, one uses frozen unsweetened strawberries and fresh cranberries, and is called Christmas Jam, and the second was a creation called Apple Pie Jam.

Imagine my surprise when, within a few days of deciding to make apple pie jam, Mrs Wheelbarrow herself featured that recipe!  I had to make it!  We had apples aplenty from our trip to the Community Apple Orchard.  Last Saturday was a day crammed with lots of fun things, including a trip to Pella and to the local farmer's market- it went by so quickly, as most of my Saturdays do.  It's the one day I don't work at either of my jobs, and I try to make sure to spend just enough time to get the laundry done and do minimal housekeeping so I can have some play time.  Here's what we picked up Saturday:

We had a very late lunch, and then weren't very hungry for supper.  I had dinner in the crockpot anyway, so we decided to just let it continue to do its thing while we made the jam.  Halfway through, I realized that my grandma's ladle wasn't anywhere- Jeffrey had left it at a work potluck on Thursday (and now it's missing, which makes me very sad).  Jam also takes a lot of sugar, and if I wanted to make two batches, someone would have to go to the store.  Jefrey got elected, while I finished up the first batch and started peeling and chopping apples for batch #2.



I had everything ready by the time Jeffrey got back from the store with a new plastic (ICK!) ladle and 2 bags of sugar.  I put this batch into itty bitty gift jars.  Here are the results of our labor.  The color is very dark, because of the brown sugar and spices in the recipe. 

I had just enough  warm jam left over to pour over a little dish of vanilla ice cream for each of us.  Delicious!