Get Saucy!

Each season I get excited about the gobs of fresh, seasonal produce that abound at the market. Although it is true that in this day in age you can get peaches virtually year round thanks to Chile (though they probably taste like a brick much of the time), and apples are available throughout the year, when fall comes blustering through, and the heirloom varieties of apples begin to line the shelves at the grocery, I want to eat apples, and I turn my nose up at sweet stone fruit.

Sure, an apple is great eaten out of hand when you are brown bagging it. But apples are terrific cooked in a myriad of different dishes. A simple dish that I have come to rely on takes advantage of apples, and their bulbous, buttery sister, the pear. Apple Pear Sauce, sweet, but not cloyingly so, chunky, with bits of fresh fruit bobbing about, and scented with vanilla, makes for an ideal accoutrement for any meal.

Those little flecks of black nestled in the sauce are not in fact microscopic insects, but rather the remnants of a pure Tahitian vanilla bean. Split, seeds carefully extracted and simmered with the fruit, this brings the sauce to a new bourgier level, elevating it from just-a-sauce-to-eat-with-pork-chops, to a, stand-on-its-own sort of side dish. The sweet-tart flavor of the apple is the perfect compliment for the grainy, mellow flavor of the pear, and the vanilla bean fragrances the entire house during the cooking process.

This sauce stays for quite awhile in the refrigerator, and is a wonderful addition to weekday breakfast, or lazy weekend brunches. If you would like the recipe for Apple Pear Sauce, go to the Daily Specials page, to get the so-simple-it's-hardly-a-recipe recipe.