Sugar High Fridays 2: Apples

PUMPKIN & APPLE CRUMBLE
From Feast - Nigella Lawson


This post is quite a landmark for me. Not only is it the first time I've made a dessert using pumpkin as a main ingredient (being Australian, pumpkin is usually confined to the accompanying vegetables of a roast meat), but it is also the first recipe I made from Nigella's new cookbook, Feast and..........my first particpation in an internet community themed blogging experience!
This is not to say I'm new to them; I've been an eager participant in the viewing process ever since February, when Alberto introduced the first IMBB, but without an internet site, a reluctance to burden the organisers with an emailed entry and an extremely heavy workload at university, I restricted myself to only viewing the entries.
But now I've finished my postgraduate course, and dammit, I want to participate!...so I signed up with Blogger and I'm now going to be an *active* participant.

I know when I read the rationale behind the theme for this SHF I initially bristled...hey, it's not Autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere hmmph! What about all the bloggers from the southern part of the world? (further research revealed precious few, actually!)...but upon further thought I justified that an organiser for such an event cannot and should not be all things to all people, and anyway, here in Australia apples are available all year 'round, even if they are not at their prime in November! If they're being cooked judiciously well, they don't necessarily have to be at their crispest and juiciest. The point as I see it is to try something I've never tried before, and I'm certainly keen to do that.
So, to find an interesting recipe where top quality apples weren't necessarily needed, and perhaps one where they weren't the overall starring ingredient....

In came Nigella, with her latest book. It was purchased in London only a few weeks ago, at a price drastically lower than what it would cost me here. And I found it on page 67: "Pumpkin & Apple Crumble". Perfect. And even though it's really a heavy Winter dish, the type of unseasonal, rainy, cool Spring we're having here makes it perfectly appropriate.

I hestitate to include the complete recipe, especially from such a newly released book from somebody with a retenue of more vigilant lawyers than I. I cannot find it anywhere on the 'net, which adds weight to my feeling that I shouldn't be the first to break copyright! However, I will include what Nigella writes in the introduction to the recipe:

"Sweet, grainy cubes of pumpkin turned, with wincingly sour apples, in spiced butter and topped with a brown sugar rubble of sandy crumble: this is the most cosy, warming pudding you could imagine."

...and it really is. It is headily fragrant with the scents of cinnamon, ground cloves and ginger, tart from the Granny Smith apples I used, and rich from the meltingly soft pumpkin. Served with some natural yoghurt on the side, I was a happy girl.

Perhaps you'll just have to go out and buy the book. ;-)