Watts Cooking?

Apple season is still in high gear in the Montreal area. Our house is filled with baskets of many different kinds, although granny smith's are my favourite. (Apparently there really WAS a granny smith! Who knew??) When my lovely friend V decided to host a birthday party last week, she asked if everyone attending could bring an appetizer. I don't really have a go-to appetizer. Most very good cooks I know have a signature appetizer that they are known for and that they are begged to bring at every function.

I have a clean slate: No signature appetizer, but not signature failed appetizer either. So I wanted to bring something a bit unusual, to shake things up a bit. Lucky for me, I had recently made the purchase of a mandoline. It was still my toy of the moment and most of my recipes contained something that needed to be mandolined.

A bucket of beautiful apples + A new mandoline = Apple Chips!


The idea kind of came out of the blue, and I had no recipe, only a concept. I quick zip over to Epicurious and I found exactly what I was looking for. I won't pretend it was a breeze, in fact, I had more than one "this just isn't worth it" moments, but I soldiered on! I will leave you my tips for mastering this recipe at the end of the post and please: Follow my instructions! I'm just trying to help prevent a world full of people swearing at their ovens and throwing cookie sheets in the garbage.

After a few mishaps (which, again, I will share at the end), the chips did turn out quite good. They had a great crispy texture and the flavour was very intensely apple. All that effort might have actually been worth it! But I still felt like they were incomplete. Originally, one of my ideas had been to make candy apples, but the mess in my poor kitchen would have been monumental. However, it dawned on me that candy apples are essentially apples - and caramel. That's what I decided to make a caramel dipping sauce to give the apple chips that candy apple taste.


I dug through my Google Reader to see if any of my favourite bloggers had posted a caramel recipe, as once again,  I didn't have a standard. I was rewarded with one of the most delicious caramel sauces I had ever tasted. Honestly? It kind of stole the show a little bit from the apples, which is a shame as it took about a fifth of the time to make. But sometimes that's just the way it goes! The recipe says to just trust the process. Having never made caramel before there were a few panicked calls to the ever stoic T. claiming I had ruined the sauce but he encouraged me to soldier on, and soldier on I did! I trusted the recipe, like it says, and I couldn't have had a more stunning result. Not only is it ridiculously delicious, the colour of the caramel is beautiful. I also love the fact that it's not a hurt-your-teeth sweet, but a more subtle flavour.


All in all, everyone seemed to enjoy the combination, and I did get quite a few compliments, which made all the had work worth it! Would I make the apple chips again? Only with a lot of free-time (not when I'm in a rush like this time!) and only with the tips and tricks I now know.

Would I make the caramel sauce again? ABSOLUTELY! A million times over, on anything and everything!!

Oh and I need to give a special Thank You to my sister without whom this caramel would not have happened. Her last-minute dash for me to the grocery store after I had stupidly forgotten an ingredient made it all possible. So thanks, K!

And finally, things have been insanely hectic this last week with school, but it's starting to quiet down a bit now (the calm before the storm of final exams). Hopefully this means more frequent posts as I'll be doing more cooking. I also made another appetizer for V's birthday that falls into the way-too-easy-to-be-good category (very different from the long drawn out process of the apple chips!) and I hope to have that written up for you in the next few days so stay tuned!


Recipe - Apple Chips and Salted Butter Caramel Dipping Sauce

As I've left both of the recipes rather untouched, I recommend you go to epicurious for the apple chips and to Tartelette for the caramel.

Tips for the Apple Chips:

• For this recipe to succeed, you need to be well equipped. You will need a mandoline and a silpat (or similar). These are non-negotiable. I know the recipe claims you can use parchment paper, this is a lie. Trust me, there are two batches of apple chips sitting in my garbage to prove it. I just absolutely couldn't get them off the paper! They were stuck on like glue! It's not worth the battle. But when I switched to a silpat, they just peeled right off easily.
• Mandolines are also quite non-negotiable. You need to cut the apples wafer-thin. So, unless you have crazy knife skills, a mandoline will be your best bed.
• For a little added flair, I peeled and cored the apples first, then cut them with the crinkle cutter of my mandoline, although all this is absolutely optional but I thought it made cute little doughnut crinkly chips.
• Don't do this recipe between studying for exams, when your stress level is already through the roof - trust me!

Tips for the Caramel:

• As the lovely Tartelette says on her blog, TRUST THE RECIPE! Just do as it says and it will reward you with the best caramel you've ever had.
• Oh and make sure you have all the ingredients before you start... Unlike me!