We should never forget importance of apple orchards in our landscape

The initiative was started to raise awareness not only of the importance of orchards for our landscape and culture but also for the provenance and traceability of our food. The apple is used as a symbol of the physical, cultural and genetic diversity that we shouldn’t allow to slip away. Their hope is that linking particular apples with their place of origin helps orchards to be recognised for their contribution to local distinctiveness. Nowhere can already be doing this as much as the apple growers of Armagh. St Patrick himself is said to have planted a number of apple trees in the county. The Armagh Bramley has the distinction of having Protected Geographic Indicator status ( PGI) making it a cherished product from a single area, like Champagne and Parma ham.

“Apples, apples everywhere and hardly a one to eat. The big red and yellow plastic spheres, waiting in the market for the unsuspecting, are so suspiciously, so blatantly, thick skinned and shiny, it is easy to pass on by. What we must live on is the memory of a what a good apple tastes like.” This was taken from an article in the New York Daily News from 1977 but is more than pertinent today. When you grow or are gifted a local heritage apple it won’t be uniform in size ( nature isn’t like that), it may have the odd blemish but it will have a taste like nothing you could buy in a supermarket. We import apples from around the world when we grow them perfectly well here. We need to cherish the varieties we have here and use them as much as we can.

Pork and apple go beautifully together and the first recipe is for pork and apple patties with a rich gravy made with pork ribs. Years ago I went to the home of a friend’s granny in Connecticut in America. She was originally from Naples and she made what she called gravy – pork ribs cooked in wine, tomatoes and garlic very slowly over a 24 hour period. I’ve taken inspiration from her and localised the sauce with local cider. You don’t need to cook it for 24 hours, they’ll be fork tender after a couple of hours. Shred the meat and add to the juices and then add to fried pork and apple patties. To keep with the apple theme I’ve added a side of hot cabbage and apple remoulade. Remoulade means having the addition of mustard and cabbage is cooked quickly with apple and finished with a hot dressing.

For something sweet I’ve added a recipe for apple cheesecake slice. A puree of cooking apples is swirled into a cheesecake mix, spooned over a biscuit base and baked. When cool it’s topped with red eating apples, sliced and cooked quickly in a sugar syrup. Two recipes to celebrate the wonder of our local apples on Apple Day.