Originally published on August 31, 2017
Tecuana Wooldridge, one of our first cooks, made this simple and delicious salad yesterday for lunch for 75 people. Our wonderful gardeners have been busy harvesting apples from our many trees, so we put them out in our communal fruit basket to enjoy and we cook them at most meals at this time of year. We start with the early transparents, which are great for a quick nibble and most certainly for baking and apple sauce. Then we move into other varieties as we wind down from summer and into fall. These include many of our old trees from homesteading of years past, variety names unknown.
This salad is best with tart apples. We used a mix of 2 varieties from our old trees in the Hollyhock garden. Our weather is so amazingly beautiful in BC at this time, so making a quick, easy, barely-cooked and fast put-together dish is just the thing to nourish us. We now have ample space in our day to enjoy the outdoors for a hike or a swim to cool off, or to take on a picnic on the water in a kayak or boat, or simply to the beach or lake and soak up the sunshine.
Ingredients
Serves 6 people
- 1 ½ lbs. Tart Apples sliced into ½ inch slices, cores removed (you can peel, we don’t)
- 1 cup crumbled Cheese (we used goat cheese, feel free to use what you have on hand and experiment)
- ½ cup dried Cranberries (feel free to substitute other dried fruits or even nuts)
- 1 Tablespoon Sunflower or neutral vegetable oil
- 1/4 Tablespoon coarse chopped Parsley
- Salt & Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Cut apples in quarters and core. Slice apples into ½ inch pieces.
- Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat and lightly saute the apples to your liking. We served them fairly firm, yet you may want them softer. You can also add a bit of sugar after the apples have cooked a bit if you wish the apples to caramelize and take on a more golden brown hue and deeper flavor. All in all, approximately 7-12 minutes of cooking time.
- Add the apples to your salad bowl, crumble on the cheese.
- Sprinkle with the dried fruit, parsley, salt, and pepper. Toss lightly and enjoy! One can also make this salad more substantial, using a vinigarette, and greens.
Bon appetite and enjoy the last lazy days of summer and the upcoming apple bounty!
For more culinary delights, visit our Hollyhock kitchen on Cortes Island!
Photography by: Amanda McNaughton
