SC - Re: crab apple verjuis

[grizly at mindspring.com]

Another good cheat that works for us in making cider from regular apples is freezing the whole apples rock solid, then thawing them.  What this will do is rupture the cell walls of the rigid plant cells and make juicing a walk in the park.  The apples are hard to even cut without mushing them a bit when thawed.

It should also work with carabapples.  We have a 12 ton hydraulic press rigged to press the 'cheese', and I am looking forward to some crabapple jus this year.  We have mostly made cider with the rig, but there are plans for lots of stuff . . . gotta find green grapes at pruning season this year.  Anyone know when that would be, within a month or so?  I know it can very by location and varietal.

niccolo difrancesco

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> In a message dated 3/10/00 12:09:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
owner-sca-cooks at ansteorra.org writes:

>

A few years ago, I made verjuis from crab apples. I took a quart basket, put 
a quart of water on the stove, crushed the crabs and simmered them for about 
1 hour. In retrospect, if I had a juicer, I wouldn't have added the water. I 
think that maybe by the final boil, alot of the water would have evaporated, 
but then I'll bet there were some characteristically different aspects to raw 
squeezed vs cooked (like sugar content and possibly co-agulated starches) I 
then strained the mash and squeezed out as much as I could. Using a fine 
seive I tried to remove as much of the apple as possible (there still ended 
up some in the bottom of the resulting jars)I then used sterilized jars, 
brought the juice to a boil and canned the stuff. The product was a light 
yellow, clear, but with a sediment on the bottom. It was just last month that 
I tossed the final jar, the seal had never popped, but it was 3 years since I 
canned it. I chose not to temp fate. 

The result was tart, yet a hint of sweet. I used it in some 14th C French 
recipes, as I had no way of getting unripe grapes at the time. Worked for me.

Hauviette



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