The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Let's Get Ready to Crum—ble!

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Apples are one of my favourite ingredients to cook with, when I’m not eating them by themselves. Dr Bircher-Benner, founding father of the Bircher Mueslie (aka overnight oats) was adamant about the multifarious qualities of raw apple, including minerals, high fiber and vitamins. Not only that but he saw them as a way to energise recovering patients and aid their digestion. I wonder if apples have become so ubiquitous that we have come to take their miraculous properties for granted. While I do love raw apple, I also love them cooked in crumbles, cakes, tarts or simply stewed with a bit of home-made or oven tinned custard. There is such a huge difference between homemade and tinned custard, but that’s for another time. I’m not snobby about tinned food, indeed I’m all about cutting corners when it’s right but there’s just such a disparity sometimes between homemade goods following a traditional recipe, and their shop bought counterparts, or maybe I should say counterfeits. However, I digress, and as I say there’s a certain nostalgic charm to some tinned foods (pineapple ring, anyone?) Anyway, I’ve come here to write about apples not tinned custard or otherwise. 

Home Economics

Apple crumble is surely one of the great comfort foods, especially as autumn rolls round, such as now. It was one of the first recipes we made at school in Home Economics, and I can distinctly remember the sandy/almost dust-like crumble on the top, and how we baked them in little silver foil dishes (the kind you get as takeaway boxes curry houses or Chinese restaurants) and we carried it home very carefully in our bags or carried it all the way, like some precious bird egg. And in many ways, it was a kind of egg that would hatch for all of us, as it was the first time we’d cooked something for ourselves and brought it home to share with family, if they were lucky. I suppose, without getting overly dramatic, it was the birth of us as people who might be able to cook for ourselves. 

The Topping

Now I make apple crumble regularly, and to be honest it’s probably the most popular pudding in our house, mainly because everyone likes it and it’s quick and easy to rustle up, and I’m a big fan of dishes that can be left in the oven for a prolonged period of time and are seemingly all the better for it. I maintain that one of the big mistakes that people make when cooking is not leaving things in the oven for long enough – what I’ve learnt about crumble is that there is a big margin for error with crumble, i.e. I tend to leave mine in for about an hour, in order to make sure the apples are really starting to almost caramelise under the topping, and that the topping is really crunchy. Gone are the schooldays of sandy crumble, too. I now always add in at least 50 grams more of butter than the recipe suggests for the crumble in order to achieve these kinds of clusters of crumble, which give the most amazing crunch richness and texture to the finished pud. I’m also a big fan of putting roasted, chopped hazelnuts through the crumble, along with oats, to add even more layers of texture and flavour. Demerara sugar sprinkled over the top can also add one more final layer of crispness. 

Cox’s Orange Pippins

And as for the apples, I’d always used Bramley apples until I heard Raymond Blanc on TV swear by Cox’s Orange Pippin. Using these apples was a game changer. Bramley apples are fine and do come out well, but the problem, as Blanc pointed out, is that you have to add lots of sugar to them in order to balance out the high level of acidity in them. With Cox’s Orange Pippins, however, not only do you not need to add additional sugar, but they hold back a little bit of their shape when cooked, and their slightly aromatic flavour intensifies. And they are wonderful to eat raw - a definite step-up from Royal Gala, say – so much more complex and interesting on the palette. I love these apples so much that a few years ago we got our own Cox’s Orange Pippin tree. It’s still in its early years, so we’re yet to be inundated with apples, but we’ve been getting about 20 a year for the past couple of years, and this year they were particularly red - I think because of the interspersed hot and wet spells over the summer. 

The Accompaniment

I won’t judge you for what you have with your crumble, unless of course you have nothing with it. I love crumble, I do, but it definitely benefits from an accompaniment, such as cream, ice cream or custard. When I first made custard I couldn’t quite believe how simple it was, but as with anything, sometimes these food companies make it too easy for us to simply grab a tin of Ambrosia from the shelf. What we miss out on with shop bought custard is the simultaneous lightness and richness that comes from the mademade stuff - the egg yolks, the vanilla bean paste (which I what I usually have at hand as it keeps well) and the full fat milk, made to the consistency of your choosing - some like thick custard, some like it runny, for example. I don’t think Dr Bircher-Benner would approve of the caster sugar involved, but, as no scientist said, ever: a little bit of what you fancy does you good. 

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Andrew Jamison is a poet and teacher, and you can read more articles on his blog here or get a paid subscription and access all previous and future posts here. You can also browse his poetry collections and buy signed, first editions of each of them here.