We bought the first apples of the year (for us) at the Smithville Market on Saturday. These are Lodi apples, an improved version of Yellow Transparent. Yellow Transparents are fairly common around here, but I hadn't seen the Lodi before. The two are close enough to be fairly interchangeable, I suspect. The Lodi's are more attractive to my eye.They are a very pleasant apple for eating out of hand, being tart, crisp and fragrant. However, they do not store well - early apples generally don't - and should be used within a week or two of harvest. Apparently they are a primo apple for making applesauce and applebutter. Reports are more mixed on their use in pies and baking; they soften a lot and cook down to mush fairly rapidly. Either you like that feature or you don't. I have to admit I prefer my cooked apples to hold a little shape. I'll update this report once I have tried cooking with them.
UPDATE: Lovely as these were to eat when they were fresh from the market, they really didn't last long - within 3 or 4 days we were noticing that they were still good, but just not as zingy as when they had been bought. I made an Apple Crisp with the last 6, and they were a very decent baking apple - they did shrink down, but kept some shape and their good tart flavour.
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1 comment:
We have Lodi apple tree and mostly we use the apple for making apple leather. Tomorrow we are going to put them in a steamer to see if we can make juice.
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