A good fruit crisp should be in every cook’s repertoire. It’s
quick and easy to prepare, and it’s infinitely adaptable. Here
we have a classic apple crisp recipe adapted from The Gift of
Southern Cooking, a treasure of a cookbook written by Miss Edna
Lewis and her dear friend and co-author, Scott Peacock. Miss Lewis
was born in Freetown, Virginia, a farming community established
by formerly enslaved people, including her grandparents. She left
Freetown for the North during the Great Migration, eventually
settling in New York City where she was a political activist and
accomplished seamstress known for her African-inspired dresses
before becoming a cookbook author and chef. Her cookbook Taste
of Country Cooking celebrated the rich culinary traditions from her
childhood in Freetown and established Miss Lewis as one of the
preeminent voices of Southern and African American cooking—
and, moreover, of American food itself.
Scott Peacock, a James Beard Award–winning chef, met Miss Lewis
when he was in his twenties and she in her seventies, and they began
an enduring friendship that would shape his understanding of his
own culinary heritage as a Southern chef. We are humbled that he
shared this recipe for Warm Apple Crisp, one of the last recipes he
and Miss Lewis cooked together.
Crumble, crisp, or cobbler? They are all fruit desserts, baked with
some sort of nicely browned topping. A cobbler typically gets a
biscuit-topping, which absorbs the sweetened fruit juices beautifully.
The terms crisp and crumble are perhaps more debatable.
Many folks use them interchangeably. We rather like the theory
that a crumble is a base of flour and butter, with the bits forming
nice little crumbs on top, while a crisp has added ingredients
like nuts or oats to give it a little extra crisp. But Scott Peacock
and Miss Edna Lewis call this Warm Apple Crisp, and we won’t
argue with that. Indeed, it’s warm, appley, and crisp! Whatever
you call it, if you start with delicious fruit, it’s hard to go wrong.
EQUIPMENT NEEDED
A 9 by 13-inch baking dish or roasting pan. However, if what you
have is smaller, you may have extra apples and topping, which you
can bake separately in a ramekin or other small baking dish.
Ingredients
- 9 medium apples (any delicious variety—see Ingredient Notes)
- 1 cup sugar, plus 2–3 tablespoons
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt (slightly less if using fine table or sea salt)
- Juice from ½ lemon
- ¾ cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and refrigerated (plus a bit more, if necessary)
- 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (or a gluten-free blend)
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar (preferably dark brown, but light works, too)
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (optional, for serving)
Instructions
TO PREPARE
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Peel and core the apples, and cut them into ⅓-inch-thick slices. Toss
them in a large mixing bowl with 2 tablespoons of the granulated
sugar and ¼ teaspoon of the salt. Squeeze the lemon half over the
apples. (You may want to squeeze it over a little strainer to catch
the seeds.) Toss to combine, then taste an apple. If it doesn’t have a
bright, balanced, full flavor, add slightly more sugar and/or lemon
juice to the punch up the flavor.
Rub 1 tablespoon of the butter on the sides and bottom of the baking
dish, then dump in the prepared apples, spreading them out evenly.
Use a spatula to scrape out every ounce of the apple syrup that has
accumulated in the bowl. The apples may come nearly to the top of
the pan, but make sure there’s at least ½ inch of room for the topping.
Top the apples with about 3 tablespoons of the butter and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon
with the remaining 1 cup granulated sugar and ½ teaspoon
salt. Add the remaining 8 tablespoons cold butter pieces to the flour
mixture. Using your fingers, toss the butter around to coat in flour.
Then, pinch little pieces of the butter between your fingertips, creating
flour-coated bits that resemble dry oatmeal. You want to butter
all of the flour while preserving as many tiny butter bits (the “oats”
you hope to see) as you can. If the mixture breaks into pieces that are
smaller—more like sand—add a couple more tablespoons of butter.
Sprinkle the topping over the prepared apples. If it is primarily loose
and sandy, take little handfuls and squeeze it together, creating small
clumps. Distribute the topping (bits or clumps!) evenly over the
apples. Set the baking dish over a parchment paper–lined baking
sheet in order to catch any drippy juices, then bake in the center of
the oven for 45 to 60 minutes, until you see apple-syrupy bubbles
appearing on the edges of the baking dish and the topping is crisp.
Serve warm, on its own or with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
INGREDIENT NOTES
Different apple varieties cook up completely differently. Some, like
easy-to-find Mcintosh and heirloom-variety Gravenstein (our fav!),
will fall apart when you cook them. Others—like Pink Lady, Fuji,
Granny Smith and Golden Delicious—hold their shape. A good apple
pie needs both bricks (nice whole slices of apple) and mortar (the
stuff that holds together those apples when you slice it)—which you
get either by mixing fall-apart apples with hold-their-shape apples, or
by adding cornstarch or flour to hold things together.
Crisps and crumbles, however, are typically served scooped into a
bowl, rather than sliced, so the mortar is less important. (In fact, we
happen to prefer it when sweet-tart apple syrup mingles with the apples
and topping!) But even if you don’t need to mix your apples for
texture, you can do so for flavor. Some apples have really nice, balanced
flavors, while others need a little extra help from lemon juice and sugar
to achieve the right balance. (A few—like supermarket-popular
Red Delicious—need a lot of help. We suggest avoiding those!) It’s all
about experimenting (SNC Principle #3!), figuring out what you like,
and above all, tasting and adjusting (SNC Principle #2!).
