They never went away, of course, but it does feel like apples are back. As are the complaints. Too floury! Too hard for my filling! Sour! Too sweet! Not sweet enough! Not like they used to be! “I am not eating that old-person apple” (my son regarding a speckled rennet). Our fruit bowl is full, and this week’s recipe is inspired by la torta di mele (apple cake, and also known as la pite di mele), which is somewhere between a pie and a tart filled with apple, dried fruit and nuts, and typical of the mountainous region of Carnia in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
I have had my eye on the recipe for more than 20 years now, since seeing it on page 74 of Claudia Roden’s The Food of Italy, then later in various regional recipe books. Older recipes often call for small pomi selvatici (wild apples), and as a consequence suggest using “the quantity of sugar necessary”, which, based on the wild apples I have bitten and then hurled across the field, I imagine is considerable. Modern recipes recommend all sorts of apples – red, golden delicious, rennet (which are rather like russets) – and cut in all sorts of ways: grated, sliced, cubed. Even with eating apples, though, with their wildly differing sweetness, an open mind about the amount of sugar is a good idea: add 100g, then taste before adding any more.
