a teaspoon of cinnamon or mixed spices for gingerbread
Yesterday evening I turned on the oven specifically to dry some orange slices: I sliced two of them thinly, with the peel, then placed them on a wire rack and waited patiently to see them shrivel through the glass of the door. Occasionally I opened the door with the excuse of checking the cooking ... in reality it was just to feel the heat coming out and a fabolous scent, very different from that of fresh orange, rather honeyed and concentrated, vitaminic. This morning I took the well-dried slices to practice a hole and attach a rustic twine, necessary to hang them on the Christmas tree.
Here begins my Christmas: actually I didn't feel little desire to cook, maybe because the advent weeks are always full of dinners. I limit myself to cooking a few small cakes, not too much calories: I vented my desire to bake biscuits first for a swap between friends and then with my nephew today, I have now to be stopped. The intimate and warm atmosphere of Christmas is not easy to assimilate for me, I prefer to think of it as winter in general: a warm blanket to wrap around watching a movie, an aromatic tea that warms your hands and thoughts, cold feet, pine branches with scent of resin and lighted white candles.
the ideal dessert in these moments for me are the Pomi Cotti, the baked apples: perhaps an ancestor of the dessert to the spoon, an ancestral form of creamy and satisfying cake ... when I was young in the winter there was always a bowl in kitchen, covered with foil, which went down to level a few teaspoons at each passage of mine. My grandmother, however, cooked them without peel, in small pieces in a saucepan with a little water and a little sugar: I instead remove the core and bake them whole, with spices that grandma perhaps do not like so much. The wrinkled skin, after cooking, contains the soft and buttery pulp and opens just enough to accommodate a teaspoon. I advise not to lose the juice that is formed in the pan, but to use it to wet the apples before eating them: a big cup will be fine, so even eat them on the sofa in front of a good film will be easier.
Wash the apples carefully and remove the core leaving the whole apple. Place it on a baking dish and season with honey, spices and a piece of butter on top of each. Bake for about 1 hour at 160/170 degrees: as it depends a lot on the size of the apple, check the cooking by pricking the pulp, which must be creamy and soft. Serve warm with their sauce.
Some other even more delicious versions:
- Amaretti (sprinkle with crumbled amaretti before baking) - Stuffed (in a mixer, mince some orange peel, almonds and raisins soaked in rum then add this mixture in the hole left from the core) - with Gelato (serve the cooked apples with a scoop of cream or vanilla ice-cream ).
