Apple season is upon us, and local farmers' markets are rife with varieties like Gala, Jonagold and McIntosh — but if you're lucky, you have an orchard somewhere near your town that can provide you with artisanal varieties, like the Stayman Winesaps I used in the apple dumpling recipe below. They have a tart, wine-like flavor that lends a sweet, tangy finish to balance the richness of the pastry and cinnamon sauce.
Keeping it Real
After searching through my digital archive of recipes, and all over the internet, I wasn't happy with the selection with which I was presented. Rachael Ray and Pioneer Woman both favor recipes that use canned crescent rolls and Mountain Dew as base ingredients, and I scoff heavily at making something so deliciously simple chemically complicated with brominated vegetable oil, thiamin hydrochloride, and yellow #5. If you follow Michael Pollan'sadvice about "real food" being "things that your great-grandmother" would recognize, those recipes would not fit the bill.
Here's my solution from a little cookbook I picked up in a small shop at Turkey Run State Park in Parke County, Indiana. A nice local woman by the name of Louise Roberts Myers wrote "Down Home County Cookin'" in order to remind us all of "the kind of food your Grandmother prepared" and out of fear that "someday nobody will be able to fix real mashed potatoes and gravy or homemade chicken and noodles."
Well, Mrs. Meyers, I share your recipe now to keep that hope alive!
Apple Dumplings
From the Kitchen of Louise Roberts Myers, Adapted by Natalie DeWitt
Ingredients:
For the dough:
For the filling:
For the Syrup:
Directions: