Erica De Mane

Recipe: Sautéed Apples with Grappa, Raisins, and Pine Nuts, Served with Sweet Ricotta

Apples are one of the foods we New Yorkers can truly claim as a local specialty. Right now at my Greenmarket I can find about 20 varieties of fragrant area-grown apples, some cherry red, some blackish red, some striped with cordovan, some light green or bright yellow or burnished yellow, some mini, a few outrageously huge. I feel well covered in the apple department, which makes me less jealous of my Italian friends with their 15 varieties of artichokes and their big-deal wild mushrooms and truffles. You think a truffle smells? Well, the aroma in my little kitchen, when I bring home a big bag of New York State fall apples, makes me wild with desire, desire not to eat them raw but to cook with them, forcing every bit of their essence into the air I breath. I’m not that crazy about raw apples, but cooking takes them up to a very high level, a level of greatness. When I go to the market I concentrate on finding the best apples for cooking, ones that have some tang and don’t collapse into a big mush. Cortland, Ginger Gold, Macoun, Jonathan, Mutsu, Northern Spy, Rhode Island Greening, and Winesap are my favorites this fall.

I love apple tarts of all kinds, and pies, and apple things wrapped in filo, and baked apples, but sometimes I want cooked apple fumes in my home and I want them now. Therein lies the beauty of this sauté, sliced apples flash sautéed in butter and then flamed in booze. Calvados is obviously a good booze choice, and so is brandy or rum, but from my point of view the best thing a cook can do with an American symbol like the apple is to Italianize it, so I flamed my sauté in grappa, added the exotic Sicilian combo of raisins and pine nuts, and spooned the apples over sweetened ricotta, which tastes just like cannoli filling. Instant apple gratification.

Sautéed Apples with Grappa, Raisins, and Pine Nuts, Served with Sweet Ricotta

(Serves 4)

1½ cups whole milk ricotta
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons  unsalted butter
4 not-too-sweet apples, such as Cortland or Ginger Gold, cored and thickly sliced (and skinned if you like)
A pinch of salt
¼ cup sugar, possibly a little more if your apples are very tart
A pinch of ground cinnamon
The grated zest from 1 small lemon
¼ cup raisins soaked in ⅓ cup grappa
A handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted

In a bowl, mix the ricotta with the powdered sugar and nutmeg. Set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium-high flame. Add the apples and a pinch of salt, and sauté for about 3 minutes. Add the sugar, the cinnamon, and the lemon zest, and sauté until the apples are just tender when poked with a knife but are still holding their shape, about 2 minutes longer. The sugar should turn very lightly golden. Add the raisins with the grappa, and stand back; it may—and should—flame up. When the flames die down, add the pine nuts, and give everything a stir.

Dole out the ricotta into 4 little dessert cups. Top with the apple slices.