Apple Jalousie

By Emma Hawkins | September 23, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

It’s taken a while for me to get my head around the new direction of this blog, specifically how on earth am I going to combine food with mental health awareness? As food is such a social and communal thing you’d think it’d be the perfect medium through which to spark conversations, and that’s what I thought, but sitting here at my laptop typing away I’m stumped as to how to make this work from my end. I’m generally one of those people who thinks out loud so I’ve decided that’s what I’m going to do now. As always the hardest things is to know how to start. How do you introduce such a sensitive topic and how do you even begin to open up about your own problems? Y’ see, I don’t think of myself as a writer and yet I thought I could write a food blog because I feel like I know about food, but when it comes to writing about something more serious than puff pastry I get a little tongue tied.

As this is a food blog I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you clicked onto this post expecting to see lots lengthy descriptions of beautiful autumn apples or to find out what the hell a jalousie actually is – that’s what you’d expect to read and that’s what I still want to deliver. So my challenge is to find a way to write mouth-watering food themed paragraphs, glossy recipes, and at the same time talk about what needs to be talked about without being way too long and boring. The question is how?

I’m afraid I haven’t come to a conclusion on that yet, but I promise I’ll keep working on it! My high school yearbook quote was “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing it”, which I think is pretty applicable. I have no idea how I’m going to do what I’m planning on doing, but it’ll work out in some way, shape or form. In the meantime (talk about not giving you mountains to read!) let me introduce you to a little fun pastry called jalousie. I first made one of these way back in school when I was young and could burn water. This is a super easy and quick way of using up any apples you’ve got lying around and is a perfect dessert for autumn!

Recipe

Serves about 9

Time: 15 minutes, plus baking time

Ingredients

1 Pack of puff pastry
2 tbsp Apricot jam
1 Large cooking apple (I went for Bramley)
1 tbsp Brown sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
2 tsp Plain flour
½ tsp Ground cinnamon
1 Small egg, beaten

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
On a lightly floured surface roll the pastry out into a rectangle about half the thickness of a £1 coin (or just buy ready rolled pastry to make your life easier). Using a knife score a 2cm boarder around the edge of the rectangle and then score a line down the middle. Transfer the pastry sheet to your lined baking tray.
Spread the apricot jam over one half of the rectangle, leaving the 2cm boarder around the edge.
Peel, core and thinly slice the apples. Bung them in a bowl with the sugar, flour, and cinnamon, and then mix together until combined. Arrange the apples over the pastry with the apricot jam so they cover the area evenly.
Take a sharp knife and cut 1cm thick lines into the other half of the pastry, again leaving the 2cm boarder that you scored earlier around the edge.
Crack the egg into a bowl and beat with a fork. Then brush a little of the egg around the 2cm boarder (this will help the pastry to stick).
Fold the pastry top over the apples, separating the strips slightly so they’re separate. Then take a fork and press around the edge of the pastry to seal the top and the bottom together.
Brush more of the egg over the pastry to glaze. Finish with sprinkle of brown sugar and then bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until puffed up and golden brown.
Serve warm with ice cream, whipped cream and/or custard!