Frytastic Apples

Deep fryingOn Saturday night, I went to a party where everyone invited was required to bring one thing: something to fry. The host had a commercial deep-fat fryer in his kitchen. (Aside: you know you're getting old when a fun night is playing with a commercial fryer.) During the course of the evening we had homemade french fries, onion rings, fried fish, fried scallops, fried "Boris balls" (quail egg wrapped in banger sausage, battered), fried Twinkies, fried Oreos, fried chocolate, and my "healthy" contribution, fried apples.

At first I thought about bringing liver, because I had some really tasty chicken fried duck livers at Cookshop recently. I planned on doing a chicken fried chicken liver. But the day got away from me, and I had a lot of apples in my fridge (and no chicken livers), so I decided to do some kind of fried apple instead. Let me tell you: fried apples RULE! I made a simple batter and enhanced it with cinnamon and sugar. I peeled, cored, and sliced the apples, as you would for a pie. The coating puffed up nicely (which I'd expected) and the apples turned wonderfully mushy (which, for some reason, I hadn't expected). Eaten in one bite, each slice was like a little apple pie in the mouth.

I was very pleased with how they turned out, and I'm going to try and make them again here at home. Without the commercial fryer, I'm not sure they'll be quite the same. But it's worth a shot. In case you're interested in giving them a go, I've posted the recipe for Fried Apples in my recipe section. Meanwhile, I really want to get a commercial deep-fat fryer of my own. Man but frying is fun!

Posted on October 3, 2006

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I was also writing about:
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The first chapter of The Queen of Fats is available online
Lecture by author Susan Allport about omega-3s
Dodging a bullet for thousands of years with crazy death-traps called farms
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