They don't deserve it - but let's be honest, sometimes apples are the fruit we all take for granted. They aren't showy, like a rich red pomegranate. They don't have the punchy flavours of passionfruit or sour cherries. But the apple is actually rather amazing. There are at least 20,000 named varieties around the world; it's a fruit you can eat just as it is, or cook both sweet and savoury dishes with; it's the vital ingredient in cider; and its hardiness makes it the ultimate portable snack.
And it all started in ..... Well, that was a trick question we posed. The apple as we know it is descended from a wild version that grew in the Tian Shan, a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The apple, then, is from either, or probably both, of China and Kazakhstan.
Geographic upheavals, and later, the movement of animals and people, saw the apple move around the world. Eventually, we would have thousands of eating apples, along with a smaller number of varieties of "crab" apples, which are more like those wild ancestors, and usually smaller and much tarter.
The first modern apples came to Australia on the Bounty, but the Granny Smith, one of Australia's favourite varieties, was born here in 1868. Others we eat a lot of originated in the US - golden delicious and red delicious, for example; Japan - the Fuji; or New Zealand - Royal Gala.
In the Autumn episode of Royal Gardens On A Plate (Thursday, 8.35pm on SBS, then on SBS On Demand), the team discover how apples once formed the basis for a wage payment in rural England, as they explore the history of that very English beverage, cider - laborers were actually paid in cider until legislation stopped the practice in 1887. Then Raymond turns eating apples (cider apples are a different beast) into a rich apple charlotte, full of golden caramelised fruit.
Get Raymond Blanc's apple charlotte recipe here.
Source: Royal Gardens on a Plate
We can buy apples all year round, but as our Seasonal Cook O Tama Carey explains, they do have a season. And they need a good winter chill to produce fruit, which explains why Tasmania is known as the Apple Isle. But Tassie isn't they only place they grow - commercial apple crops are grown in every state. And every one of those apples harks back, via its DNA, to those wild ancestors in central Asia.
Cool apples: O Tama Carey's Caramelised Fuji and Calvados ice-cream.
Source: Sharyn Cairns
