Crisp, juicy, sweet-tart apples. The world’s most storied fruit is also among the most amazingly versatile cooking of ingredients. Writer and NPR contributor Frank Browning delves into the apple’s ancient history and his own upbringing on a Kentucky apple orchard; food writer Sharon Silva draws upon her childhood on a Sonoma family farm. Together, they pay homage to the ancient fruit of temptation in this charming illustrated companion to apple and cider cookery.

An Apple Harvest is an inviting compendium of more than 60 apple-centric recipes with origins that crisscross the globe from Alsace and Applachia, Scandinavia and Sicily, and beyond. Beginning with delightful first courses such as Duck Breast and Fuji Apples on Watercress or velvety Roasted Winter Squash Soup with Cider, the savory feast continues with main dishes like Baltic Roast Goose with Sour Apples, Atlantic Salmon Fillets in Cider-Mustard Sauce, or down-home Saturday Night Supper of Fried Apples, Sausage, and Biscuits. For serving on the side there are classics like Real Applesauce or the curiously named Burning Love (you’ll have to ask the Danes about that one!). And what collection would be complete without dessert? Bourbon Apple Pie, Apple and Currant Galettes, and Apple Sorbet with Ginger are among the many tempting offerings. 

Browning and Silva pepper the collection with spirited musings about whether to peel apples for pies, how to choose apples and store them correctly, and the finer points of cooking with hard cider and cider vinegar. In a photographic field guide, they share 26 of their favorite apple varieties, describing each one’s eating and cooking characteristics, storage qualities, peak season, and growing regions.

Engaging storytelling and evocative photography make An Apple Harvest a celebration of the venerated apple, while inspired recipes showcase the breadth of edible possibilities. Stock your kitchen with cider and in-season apples and discover for yourself the many wonderful savory and sweet dishes that Braeburns, Cortlands, Macouns, Suncrisps, and their brethren can bring to the table.

From the Trade Paperback edition.You start with Duck Breast and Fuji Apples on Watercress, and end with a glass of Moroccan Apple Sharbat–and it’s all apple all the way in between. Such is the slim wonder called An Apple Harvest, courtesy of award-winning authors Frank Browning and Sharon Silva. Both authors grew up with apples in the family–acres of apples–Silva north of San Francisco, and Browning in Kentucky. Browning, in fact, co-owns and operates an orchard with his brother. So these are not supermarket food writers. The appreciation both writers bring to their task begins with the seasons of labor that go into growing and harvesting a good apple.

An Apple Harvest opens with combined reminiscences that give the reader a sense of how large, how grand the world of apples can be, given access to good and varied fruit. The introduction includes a brief history that traces the apple back to ancient origins in what is Kazakhstan today, a section on choosing apples, how to keep apples, a peel/don’t peel debate, and a little something on cooking with cider, cider vinegar, and Calvados or applejack. The “Culinary Pomarium” that follows is an illustrated guide to modern apple possibilities. And then there are the recipes.

International in scope, you will find first courses, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, and beverages. You will find a Waldorf Salad, this one including pomegranate seeds and red grapes. There’s a Roasted Winter Squash Soup with Cider, and Steamed Clams Asturian Style, which calls for cider as well. How about Fujis and Kale? Or Fox Mountain Parsnips (with dried apples and hard cider)? The desserts section begins with Apple Dumplings. There’s a Tarte Tatin recipe, followed by Kentucky Bourbon Apple Pie. Four more pies follow, one of them savory, with Swiss chard. As far as single-subject cookbooks go, An Apple Harvest sets the standard. –Schuyler Ingle

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