Favorite thing

And that is how you make strudel. Julian and I have been reading from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book in which the author is more than a little opinionated about fruit and fruit recipes of all kinds. I think it took us two weeks to get through APPLE. The book is heavy on obscure gourmet recipes and cultivars of fruit and we've gotten good chuckles out of the author's conviction that commercial fruit just isn't what it used to be.

And she's right. We find ourselves making notes as we read about varieties of apples to plant in our dream orchard, but honestly - we are, only now, half way through APRICOT.

So that is how we ended up here, making apple strudel. Jane mentioned it in the book and said that a true apple strudel only uses {insert obscure variety here} apples. Having never eaten, seen, considered a genuine apple strudel, this set us both on a mission to learn this dying art.

Come to find out, it's not so tricky after all. Basically, you make a pasta dough, roll it out so thin you can read through it, and roll up some fruit. With the right planning, you could just make one because it was Tuesday. The trick is all in the rolling, really. The dough is laid out on a floured bedsheet and then rolled like so (it's a video, click it to play).

It was interesting. It was delicious. The dough baked up half-baklava, half-lasagna. We followed this recipe. In the fruit filling, I omitted the flour, added two handfuls of dried tart cherries, a handful of chopped pecans, and a glug of rum. I need to write it down, put it in my box, and act like I've always made the stuff.

Have you had any fun kitchen adventures this week?