Soaked apples - ancient Russian snack, not less recognized and esteemed, than pickle. It isn't shameful to give pieces of well prepared apples as additive to salad, they are successfully combined with many meat dishes, can give an interesting note on skewers for a buffet reception.
The original taste of soaked apple is combined with hard liquors - vodka, whisky, a Calvados, with many dry wines therefore they can play a role of light meal to aperitif, as fruit to be an element of a sweet table, as a pickles - to be a part of an appetayzer. On a photo they look not always attractively: the wrinkled thin skin makes an impression that apples grew old while they were cooked. But it says only that with an apple managed ineptly, having chosen a simple improper grade or the wrong processing conditions. Give together step by step and step by step to comprehend small secrets which still our ancestors used in order that ""the bulk apple"" in house conditions turned out tasty and useful.
Apple, apple, what is your name?
Not each grade will be suitable for preparation of this simple and preparations of a simple type. It is necessary to approach the choice very carefully. Only those apples which aren't softened over time are suitable for a mocheniye. Otherwise at the exit you risk to be treated with unattractive apple puree.
For preparation in house conditions autumn and winter grades of apples will be the best, from among those whose taste reveals after collecting only after a while. But also fragrant grades with bright taste and dense crunchy pulp are good. All cunning is that in the fruits collected at this time the sufficient share of starch and pectinaceous substances which help apples to keep a smooth thin skin and a fine crunchy texture in the course of a mocheniye collects. The ability to remain all winter, spring and a part of summer, practically till a new harvest is among advantages of such apples. At tight packing the period of storage is also much higher, than at apples of less ""lezhky"" grades.
If you for the first time start preparation of soaked apples, take Antonovka - you won't be mistaken! Subsequently, having gained experience of preparation, it will be possible to select the grade which is most answering to your taste. It can be Uelsi, Cortney, Pepin, a rennet Shafranny, the Rennet bergamot and many other grades excellent on color, a shade of aroma and gustatory qualities.
Barrel, pan, large bottle?
The second relevant moment - the choice of a container for preparation of apples. It is better, than an oak keg, it is difficult to think up. 30 years ago the share of such preparations promptly began to decrease, and a pickles with marinades got over in glass large bottles and the enameled pans. Today everything isn't so unambiguous. With increase in number of owners of individual houses and their welfare barrels and kegs return to cellars and basements, and bondarsky art endures an era of the revival. But too nobody cancelled the glass or enameled container and to use them for a mocheniye of apples quite really.
The main thing that the container was sterilely clean, fillings was enough for a full covering of apples, and the oppression was sufficient weight to cope with buoyancy of fruits. It is also necessary to remember that apples, porous and saturated with air, will absorb filling gradually (about 1.5÷2 of l on 1 kg). Therefore it is necessary to watch that the top layer didn't act from under liquid and periodically if necessary to add it. Contact with air is inadmissible: fruits will instantly deteriorate.
Classical recipe
For filling at the rate on 1 l of water:
- 3 solovy spoons of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of salt
- spicery to taste.
Spicery - cinnamon, a carnation, caraway seeds, nutmeg, mustard grain - each hostess chooses at discretion. It is only necessary to remember that spicery can muffle the aroma inherent in these fruits by nature therefore better with spicery not ""press"".
Sugar can quite be replaced with honey, it will only improve taste. To boil water for filling, to dissolve salt and sugar in boiled water, to cool, filter. If honey is used, it is dissolved in water, boiled and cooled up to 80 °, otherwise honey will lose the most part of the health giving qualities. In recipes with application of mustard honey isn't used.
Depending on the flavoring addictions it is possible to increase a few a sugar content or salts, having placed emphasis in the necessary party. But at the same time not to forget that the excess of salt stops lactic fermentation and apples will taste bitter, and the surplus of sugar will turn your solution into a perishable intoxicated distillers' beer.
For a mocheniye select the strongest, intact fruits, without spots and wormholes. Wash a brush thoroughly, it is possible - with baking soda, especially deepening around a tail where bacteria and disputes of mold fungi can hide. Then allow to dry up, having laid out on a clean towel in one layer.
The bottom of the sterilized ware is spread a covering layer - to they can serve leaves of cabbage, grapes, nut, cherry, blackcurrant - who what loves more. Cabbage or grapes will give sourness, cherry or nut - will emphasize natural taste, the blackcurrant leaf will add a hrustkost. It is possible and mix several types of leaves, trying to obtain a combination of their influences.
Apples put in a container, fill in 3÷5 cm above the last layer with the filling cooled to room temperature and place a baking plate bends. Two-three more days mature apples in heat, at the room temperature (but not higher than 25 °) then it is necessary to suspend process of lactic fermentation by the room during cold - a cellar, the basement, fruit department of the fridge (7-14 °). It is possible and to cork hermetically, previously having boiled filling by rules of preservation. At the correct storage, apples will be ready-to-serve in one or one and a half months.
Recipe sour (fermentation)
In this case it is the most convenient to make sour apples in cabbage which also gains additional charm from the neighbourhood with fragrant fruits, and tells them special gustatory qualities.
The recipe on 1 kg of apples:
- cabbage - 1-1.5 kg
- carrots - 1 piece (not necessarily)
- sugar - 1 tablespoon;
- salt - 1 tablespoon.
Cabbage is cut cut) for narrow tapes no more than 0.5 mm wide, carrots are grated. The prepared container is covered by a cabbage leaf. Cabbage with carrots, salt and sugar mix up, keep within the alternating layers with apples, emptiness between apples are also filled with cabbage, the top layer - from cabbage. When laying, mix is well stamped, the oppression from above is established. Depending on juiciness of cabbage the amount of the emitted juice variously if it isn't enough for a covering, needs to be added filling from the classical recipe. For sharpness of fermentation (not higher than 25 °) preparation has to be in heat 3-4 days then to remove to cold (7-14 °). Readiness - in a month.