Peel Me An Apple
Posted in recipes on December 1st, 2010When was the last time someone peeled you an apple? When you were child?
Perhaps it was as a romantic gesture?
I arrived at Dr Rashid’s home in Chamba, in the far northwest corner of the state
of Himachal Pradesh, dusty and dehydrated after an 8 hour bus journey (I find
it prudent to not drink anything on long bus journeys in India: there are rarely
toilet facilities available for women where the buses pull in for refreshments,
and if there are they are often horrendous …but I will spare you the details as
they won’t gel well with a blog about food …let’s just say that dehydration is
preferable).
Dr Rashid immediately proffered a glass of ice cold water and offered me tea
(which I was hoping he would). He then opened the small refrigerator in the
corner of his room and took from it a large red delicious apple: the fruit of his own
orchard.
He sat cross legged on the bed cum sofa and set to removing the peel from the
apple with a small knife. Slowly and purposefully he drew the blade between the
skin and the flesh separating the peel. This caused it to bob gently up and down
as it grew in length and formed itself into a spiral, its cells retaining the memory
of the flesh they had enclosed only seconds before.
Once he had disengaged all of the peel he altered his grip on the knife in his
hand and began to carve the apple in crescent shaped pieces. Another change
of grip and he removed the seeds and core. In the space of 10 minutes watching
Dr Rashid perform this process had lulled me from my ‘just off a bone crunching
bus ride’ state of mild agitation to one of ‘all is well with the world’.
As is the custom in India the apple pieces were presented to me on plate placed
on a tray, imbuing the offering with a further graciousness. I could do nothing less
than bite into the crisp cool pieces with reverence.
This was not the only apple that has been offered to me in Chamba. Yesterday in
the home of Mohammed Hamid his wife Ayisha peeled and pared one for me and
served it sprinkled with salt: something that might sound like a counterintuitive
addition but it only served to heighten the sweetness of the fruit.
Apples are grown throughout Himachal Pradesh although they are not an
indigenous species. It was the British who recognized the potential to grow
orchard fruits here and introduced apples, pears, apricots and plums to the
region in the nineteenth century. Apples have become the most economically
valuable crop of Himachal (cannabis is the second most important).
Himachali’s enjoy eating apples as a snack but my investigations so far have not
uncovered any use of apples in cookery in Chamba (or elsewhere in Himachal
Pradesh). Perhaps this is because it is a relatively new food (in the Indian time
scale) and has not yet been assimilated into the local cuisine (cannabis on
the other hand is an ancient crop and its seeds are ground to make a —non-
intoxicating—chutney).
Therefore to give you an apple based recipe I have had to turn to the neighboring
valley of Kashmir where apples and other orchard fruits have been grown for
many centuries and are commonly used in cookery. I will claim two other —
admittedly tenuous —precepts for giving this recipe while I am in apple recipe
free Chamba. Firstly Mohammed Hamid (you will get to taste the food he made
for me in an upcoming post) lives in the Kashmiri Mohalla (neighbourhood) of
Chamba and both he and Dr Rashid are Muslim and the valley of Kashmir has a
majority Muslim population.
Apple Salad
Serves 6
Ingredients
¼ cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons finely chopped mint
¼ teaspoon cardamom seeds, ground
2 tablespoons lime juice
½ green chili, seeded and finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
3 medium sized apples, diced
3 tablespoons chopped walnuts
Method
Blend the yogurt, mint, ground cardamom, lime juice, chili and salt in a bowl.
Fold in the apples and walnuts. Chill for at least 30 minutes before serving.
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