Caramelized Apples with Melted Toffee — Dale Knows How To Host

Dad and Mom looking cute. Chapel Hill, NC. 2008.

Dad working on the floors of our Mallette St. house. What a project! That yellow trim came with the house and was soon gone, BTW.

The Mallette St. house where my family lived for 30+ years. Azalea season. Sigh.

The most bizarre photo ever. It looks like we’re in a cult and I’m the only one with any intention of breaking free! Mallette St. porch in the 1980s.

The Reed gals on the Mallette St. porch. Probably late 1990s / early 2000s?

The Reed granddaughters take up the Tarheel cause!

Me with my high school senior year degree project at my Uncle Frank’s house in Winston-Salem, NC. 1990. I was 17 in the photo! 17 going on 45.

West Texas, baby!

I’m just back from West Texas where I hosted the hell out of a women’s yoga and creativity retreat! You know how I know how to host? You guessed it, good old Dale! It turns out my retreat partner, Wilma, and I are kind of slow learners. We hosted seventeen of these things before we figured out that we should probably hire someone to help us cook, serve, and clean. Sheesh. But, Mom’s skills got me through those first seventeen. Growing up I was Mom’s prep cook, except when we were on diets, in which case I was the “Lean Cuisine boiler”. (Remember when you would get those boil in the bag entrees? Chicken a l’Orange anyone?! Talk about plastic BPAs!). Otherwise, doing the after dinner dishes was my main chore. My sister conveniently escaped this duty because she is a cellist and apparently “her callouses would come off” if exposed to water. I have since learned that that is NOT TRUE! She has a house and family now and certainly does dishes. But, well played, Elisabeth. Save yourself.

My West Texas retreat included a focus on meditation. We brought in Janet Gilmore to teach her Buddhist meditation tradition, called Dharmata. Until this past weekend, the closest brush I’d had with Buddhists was when I drove a van full of monks from Providence to Boston. These monks had been at my college creating a large sand mandala all week and needed to get to their next stop. I had no qualifications for driving holy people, or sinners for that matter, but my boyfriend was driving the other van and I wanted to make $25. Talk about nerve wracking! I was probably 19 years old with an oversize passenger van full of chatty monks messing with the radio (they liked pop music) while I tried to navigate around the Big Dig with no GPS. [Insert stressed out emoji face.] (My dad used to do that before he learned how to use emojis. [Insert smiley face.] I find it so charming!)

Now, I’m not a very chill person – I’m working on that – but Mom actually was. As evidenced by Mom’s needlework and meticulous researching abilities, Mom had PATIENCE. She usually had patience with me, more than she probably should have, but one time in junior high I talked back and Mom surprised the heck out of me by throwing what was in her hand directly at me: a glass jar of orange paint. Fortunately, Mom had bad aim (although I hear she was a really good shot with a gun) and the jar missed me entirely, smashed into the door behind me, and paint dripped down and landed on a Zabar’s tote bag which was hanging on the knob. I got out of there pretty damn fast and I guess Mom cleaned up the paint. We never spoke of it again but after that there was an orange stain on the Zabar’s bag, a reminder of the one time poor Mom lost it.

At my desert retreat we had guests from all over! Usually it’s just Texans but this time we also had two women from North Carolina, one from South Carolina, and one from Florida. Come to find out the two from North Carolina were from Winston-Salem, where I went to high school. And, even weirder, we had mutual friends! I spent a lot of my retreat time reminiscing about Winston-Salem and North Carolina in general and, if I’m honest, kind of pining for it. There’s a songwriter I like named Scott Miller. He’s from Virginia but lived in Tennessee for a while. We both speak Southern. In his song, The Way, there is a lyric, “I headed out to find what it is that makes a man want to come back home.” I remember sharing that quote on social media when Mom was dying, along with a photo I took of a Chatham County windy road sunset. Funny, as a teen I just wanted to flee! I slept with a book of New York City maps next to my bed. But, right now I’m super nostalgic about the Tarheel state and feverishly checking out real estate in Winston-Salem. (This is something I do, it rarely manifests but who knows?!)

So, when going through Mom’s recipes this week and thinking of home I remembered that Mom used to love to cook apples with a little butter and brown sugar as a side dish. It was a perfect accompaniment to pork chops or the like. You don’t really need a recipe for that, just a skillet and some sense. But, if you want to jazz it up maybe try this British recipe from Mom’s files? It’s more of a dessert. Hello, clotted cream!

CARAMELIZED APPLES WITH MELTED TOFFEE
(I converted the recipe from metric for you – or at least tried. You’re welcome!)

4 dessert apples, preferably cox or braeburn
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/8 cup soft brown sugar
grated zest of 1 lemon
.6 cup so a little less than 3/4 cup of double cream
1 3/4 cups luxury toffee
clotted cream to serve

For the apples: melt butter in a heavy saucepan. add the sugar and stir to dissolve.

Peel and core the apples and cut into 1 cm slices. Place these in the saucepan and gently turn to coat. Cook over gentle heat until tender but still firm [ about 5-8 minutes]. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest.

Meanwhile, pour the double cream into a heavy saucepan and bring slowly to a boil. Lower the heat to simmer and add the toffee. Stirring carefully, continue heating gently until you have a thick sauce.

Sarah’s Note: The recipe ends here! I presume you pour the sauce on the apples and top with clotted cream. Sounds good to me!

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