Not sure where to post this -- maybe Cooking and Baking, maybe here ? (Apples) {fixed a link}

[eppur_se_muova]

Last edited Wed Sep 30, 2020, 05:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Around the World in Rare and Beautiful Apples

From the sweet to the offbeat.
by Anne Ewbank January 6, 2020

Inside a bright Brooklyn gallery that is plastered in photographs of apples, William Mullan is being besieged with questions.

A writer is researching apples for his novel set in post-World War II New York. An employee of a fruit-delivery company, who covetously eyes the round table on which Mullan has artfully arranged apples, asks where to buy his artwork.

But these aren’t your Granny Smith’s apples. A handful of Knobbed Russets slumping on the table resemble rotting masses. Despite their brown, wrinkly folds, they’re ripe, with clean white interiors. Another, the small Roberts Crab, when sliced by Mullan through the middle to show its vermillion flesh, looks less like an apple than a Bing cherry. The entire lineup consists of apples assembled by Mullan, who, by publishing his fruit photographs in a book and on Instagram, is putting the glorious diversity of apples in the limelight.



Mullan, whose day job is as a brand manager for Raaka Chocolate, can rhapsodize about apples at length. He notes that the api etoile, an apple of Swiss or French origin that grows into a rounded star shape, is hard to find, with the trees he’s seen bearing fruit little and lately. He likens them to Pokémon. “You’re really lucky if you catch it,” he says with a laugh.



But he quickly sobers. “It’s a shame because they’re really cute, they’re really delicious.” Due to the demands of industrial farming, only a handful of apple varieties make it to stores, and even of those, only the most uniform specimens sit on the shelves. Growers have abandoned many delicious or beautiful varieties that have delicate skin, lower-yield trees, or greater susceptibility to disease.



***
more: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/unusual-apples
https://www.instagram.com/pomme_queen/ (photo gallery)

I'm especially fascinated by the Black Oxford, since it might be cross-bred with the Arkansas Black. The Arkansas Black faded from production after a wave of parasites killed much of the crop. Perhaps a hybrid could prove more resistant, and still a late fruiter like the AB. With advancing climate change, a strain that ripens in November might grow pretty far north !

ETA: cut-&-paste errors in links

[jpak]

1. You can still buy Black Oxfords

They are fantastic winter apple.

They will ripen in Feb and March.

Fresh home grown apple pies!

Yum

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Wow! We've got loads of orchards around here with roadside stands that you would expect...

to love this sort of stuff. Should bring even more tourists out here. Right?

Alas, I've talked to a lot of them about expanding their supplies, but all tell me that the expense and risk of bringing new or different things to market isn't worth it.

[femmedem]

3. Russet apples are so, so tasty.

Tart but not sour, rich, crisp. I've never seen or tried a knotted russet, but I'd like to!

Our local orchards had winesaps, baldwins and cortlands when I was growing up in the Hudson Valley. Soooooo good. Best field trip of every year was apple-picking day. I think the winesaps are rarer now.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I did an on-site job interview in Rochester several years ago. The hotel bar and restaurant ...

... kept bowls of apples of several varieties grown locally sitting out where guests could take what they wanted. I think that's the first place I had a Honey Crisp. Must be nice to live in that area !

[Cracklin Charlie]

4. I love apples!

I was raised in Arkansas. My dad always told me that 500 apple varieties used to grow in Arkansas. I wonder what happened to them all?

I would love to try those.

[pansypoo53219]

6. the year i discovered arkansas black was the best year for me.sweeter than usual. prefect apple.

Last edited Wed Sep 30, 2020, 11:13 PM - Edit history (1)

wait for weeks + you can cook it. i live for my golden delicious tho. and my transparent/lodi for applesauce.

we have 1 seller at the farmer's market that sells heirloom apples. last year she had crab apples + i had to make jelly like my grandma did. she remembered her mom's jelly. she got 2 jars.