"An apple pie without some cheese is like a hug without a squeeze!"

Here are some of the ingredients for a Lancashire Apple Pie that I made for Great Maine Apple Day which was, admittedly, yesterday October 24th...BUT maybe I bought my apples yesterday and I am continuing the celebration today?? Possible right?

Here is the list of Maine ingredients: 

Apples...Blue Pearmain, Fireside and Winesap...don't know the orchard names, sorry! 

Organic apple cider from The Apple Farm, Fairfield, Maine

Kate's Butter, Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Sonnental Dairy raw milk cheese, Buggy Whip extra sharp cheddar, Smyrna, Maine

Egg yolk, Bowden's, Waldoboro

anything else is from out of state

THE RECIPE, from a very old issue of the best magazine in the universe...British Country Living..is basically a Brit version of the French tarte tatin, an upside down apple tart... made with a cheese pastry crust for a delicious counterpoint...ta dah!! 

Pie filling:

1 1/4 lbs assorted sweet and tart, hard, preferably local, apples cut into slices

finely grated zest of one lemon, preferably Meyer

2 oz butter

2 oz sugar

4 fl oz apple cider (apple juice for Brits!)

LANCASHIRE PASTRY:

6 oz white, unbleached flour

3 oz butter

3 oz freshly grated hard cheese of your choice...I like extra sharp cheddar but you can use whatever you think your tastebuds would like so long as it is of a similar texture and hardness to cheddar.

pinch of salt if you use unsalted butter...say it with me “I always use salted butter cos I like the taste”

1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tablespoon of cold water

1 tablespoon of sugar

(For US/UK weight conversions etc please visit Sue Pallett's website where all will be revealed)

Make the pastry first so it can rest for a while in the fridgerdator...that’s what I call it and I’m sticking to it!

1. Sift flour, salt, sugar together and then blend in the butter until the mix resembles ground almonds...I really like the process of baking so I do everything by hand...if you are not doing it in a processor I suggest putting the butter in the freezer for a while before you start making the pastry and then grate the butter into the flour mix so there is less hand working and the pastry doesn’t warm up...you want to keep it as cold as possible.

2. Stir in the grated cheese.

3. Then stir in the egg/water and gently bind together with your hands.....basically just very gently squush it together until it forms a ball...

4. Wrap, I don't like plastic wrap so I wrap mine in parchment paper, the ball of dough and put it in the fridgerdator for at least an hour - the longer the better - the colder it gets the better the flakiness.

Assemble the filling:

1. Grease heartily a 8-81/2" glass pie dish with lovely butter.

2. Peel, core and slice the apples...I do all this in a bowl of cold, lemoned water so the apples don’t turn brown before I use them, I keep the slices in the lemon water 'til I need them and then drain them before use and shake out in a colander so they aren’t watery.

3. Melt butter, sugar and apple cider in a pan together and heat til bubbling...reduce by about 2/3 thirds 'til it is nice and syrupy.

4. Cool syrup somewhat then pour into the base of the pie dish.

5. Pile in the apples somewhat evenly and press down...they shouldn’t be too high....

6. Roll out the cooled pastry to a circle just bigger then your pie dish and lay over the apples.

7. Press down on the apples and even up the edge...poke holes in the top to let out the steam and keep the pastry crisp.

8. Bake on a lipped tray...in case the juices flow over....in a 400F oven for about 40 minutes until the pastry is evenly browned and glorious.

I used a glass pie dish so I could see how the apples were...they did look like there was a lot of juice bubbling in there but it didn’t turn out to be so much in the end, I think the heat made it expand and look like more than it actually was.

9.THE TRICKY PART, where it can all go awry!!

Let the pie cool for a while...I left it about 15 minutes, then put an appropriately large enough plate over the pastry, take a deep breath and invert the pie onto the plate...I was very happy mine came out very easily and looked quite nice, I have seen Joolia do this and the whole thing feel apart all over the place...I think it depends on how your apples stand up to the pressure..if they are fluffy, mushy apples they’ll just turn to apple sauce, that’s why you need to start with nice, crispy hard varieties.

The pie fresh from the oven...

The pie sliced and served naked...really it is kind of an apple pizza isn't it? The apples were perfectly cooked, retained their tang and shape, were nicely sweet and a great complement to the very cheesy, savoury and crumbly crust.
Do give it a try...and here for autumn is a poem to contemplate whilst you eat your
Lancashire Apple Pie

ODE TO AUTUMN

John Keats (1785-1821)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o’erbrimme’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while they hook

Spares the next swath and all its twin-ed flower;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with a patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the sounds of Spring? Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, - thou hast thy music too,

While barr-ed clouds bloom the soft dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Buttermilk scones from nearly all Maine ingredients

First of all here is my, Lucie and Eleanor's 'homage' to one of the cutest logo's going....have you seen the picture of the real Kate on Kate's packaging, it is truly adorable....

After discovering Kate's real buttermilk...the actual milk leftover after the making of Kate's delicious homemade butter...and when they say homemade they really do mean HOMEMADE...(I just saw a video at the Boston Globe online of the butter being made in Dan Patry's garage...YES his garage click here to see for yourself) ... I started thinking about the things I could make for the blog that featured this delightful ingredient. As I haven't made scones yet they seemed like the perfect place to start, then I thought, you know I could put Maine made blueberry jam on the scones and Maine wildflower honey...and then I realized I could use Maine flour...the only things I didn't use that were made in Maine were the salt, the yoghourt I put on one of the scones and a tablespoon of sugar.
Here's the list of the ingredients:
Kate's butter and Kate's buttermilk, Old Orchard Beach, Maine
Colleen's Homemade (and this also is made in someone's home) blueberry jam, Route One, Searsport, Maine
Swan's wildflower honey, Albion, Maine
Fiddler's Green high gluten flour (also someone's home literally at the back of our fields) Belfast, Maine

The recipe, from 'Having Tea' Recipes and Table Settings by Tricia Foley, is really simple, quick and delish...here we go

INGREDIENTS:
1 3/4 cups flour (I used high gluten just because it was the most appropriate one I could get from Maine...it's like bread flour but you can use regular unbleached white, I have done this recipe with both and could see or taste no discernible difference)
1 tablespoon sugar, any kind you like
1 teaspoon of salt, that's if you don't use salted butter...I always use salted butter so leave out the salt if you do too
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
5 tablespoons/2 1/2 ozs cold butter cut into small pieces ...Kate's sea salted for me
Approx 3/4 cup Kate's buttermilk...depends on the flour and the weather how much of this you will use...I ended up using a good bit less than this but you never know.
1/2 cup raisins if you like them...I do very much, I wanted to use Maine dried blueberries but there weren't any at the Belfast Coop
THE PROCESS:
1. Preheat your oven to 450F
2. Combine dry ingredients together in a largish bowl and mix thoroughly, I also add a little grated nutmeg because I like nutmeg in practically everything I make...especially baked goods.
3. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients...I do this with my hands by 'rubbing' it in, you can use a pastry cutter, two knives if you know how to do that...or do it in a cuisinart...until it resembles fine crumbs...don't overwork and let the ingredients warm up as the butter will start to melt and the recipe will get messed up, and then we'll all have a bad day.
4. Add just enough buttermilk, bit by bit, to make a soft dough
5. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 1/2" thick and either just cut roughly into squares or use a round cutter to make little cute circles...I like the rough squares because that's how my Mum did it when I was growing up!!!
6. Bake the little darlings for about 10-12 minutes til nicely browned on the top.
7. Cool, spread with butter, jam, honey, CLOTTED CREAM if you can find it....there's nothing like clotted cream so I drained some maple yoghourt overnight, to stay with the Maine theme, and used that instead...NOT quite the same, I prefer butter and jam or honey on my scones.

Now here's the question we all want answered is it SCOnes as in bones or sconns as in bonbons...for me as a Northern girl it is the former...SCOnes as in bones...but you can say it whichever way you like!!!

Here are the finished scones...somehow they seem to develop their own midway horizontal line where you can gently pry them apart in preparation for the lashings of butter and jam or honey...now all you need is a good cuppa tea!!!

Lucie, who helped me do the baking...what am I saying she DID the baking, and I as usual drank the tea.....anyway, Lucie certainly liked the scones, she ate about 5!, she preferred hers with blueberry jam as she is not a big fan of honey...I went the honey route...Swan's wildflower honey is very floral and redolent...it's fantastic on scones and buttered toast...I bet Winnie the Pooh would like it!!