Apples.
My staple fruit throughout winter, and the main ingredient of my favourite dessert (strudel, yes, how predictable could I be).
This is because I grew up between two of the major European valleys where apples are produced. Between Marlene and Melinda - apples are really everywhere. Crates and crates get harvested in the fall and they last seemingly forever, stored deep in mountain shelters, buried in the snow.
Because there’s a lot of usage for apples, from raw eating to juicing. In between, a preparation that is a curious bridge between the Dutch, the Swiss, and the Portuguese gastronomies.
I am talking about apple sauce.
It seems unlikely, and yet we are in for a wild ride here.
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We are starting with a place I would have never imagined to be starting when talking about apple sauce used as a gastronomic component.
This is because Portuguese gastronomy is not exactly known for mixing meat and fruits as, for instance, Ikea has taught us all that Sweden is.
So imagine my surprise when I was served a slice of regional bread, slathered with sweet and creamy apple sauce, and topped with a round slice of freshly roasted morcela.
Morcelas in Portugal are many. In general, they are made with meat trimmings, meat leftovers from the preparation of other sausages (including small, partially bloody pieces from cleaning the carcasses), fatty meat and some fat, chopped with knives. In most cases, blood is added.
The meats are then seasoned. In most cases with salt, garlic, garden pepper, black pepper and cumin, and in some cases even seasoned with orange slices.
In some cases, the morsels are prepared with the addition of bread, preferably hard, cut into thin slices and sprinkled with blood, and in some cases also onions (in some cases raw and in others fried in fat), chopped parsley and rendered pork fat, in other cases honey.
In some cases, they are smoked, in others they are not.
The result is a pitch-dark sausage, mainly soft and very aromatic.