Believe Manifesto

Today I bring you: Cumin Apple Chips from The Gourmet Cookbook

MAKES 18 CHIPS/ACTIVE TIME: 10 MINUTES                                   START TO FINISH 1 3/4 HOURS

3 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 medium Granny Smith apple (or two small)

Put a rack in the middle of oven and preheat oven to 200F. Line a large baking sheet with nonstick liner or parchment. Sift together confectioners’ sugar and cumin, then sift together again. Sift half of cumin sugar evenly onto liner or paper. Cut apple crosswise into very thin slices with slicer (mandolin). (Reserve remaining apple slices for another use or batch.) Sift remaining cumin sugar evenly over apples.  Bake slices until pale golden and beginning to crisp, about 1 1/2 hours. Immediately peel chips off liner and let cool on a rack

If you use parchment paper, be prepared for some chips to stick to it. When they do, return them to the oven for 3 minutes to soften.

For those of you who are just joining, you can find out what the food rut means here. And yes, I said Cumin and not cinnamon. We are going to trust Gourmet you all! They don’t just pull these recipes out of a hat and decide to publish them in their fancy book. During this month I will aways post the recipe at the VERY TOP. Because am I alone in thinking that recipes at the very bottom are the sorriest thing ever?! Even if you come back for nothing less…come back for the recipes.

For a little intro into the “Gourmet cooking lifestyle” (I am not a member of this lifestyle) let me bring you a quote from Ruth Reichl their current Editor in Chief:

The book that taught me to cook was a big brown leather-covered tome with The Gourmet Cookbook stamped in gold on the front. I called it “the Book,” but to a little girl in the fifties, it was more than that. It was the doorway to a magic land where sophisticated men sipped drinks with names like angel’s dream while beautiful women nibbled on truffled chicken. Dreamily I turned the pages, perusing the recipes for lobster Newburg, apricot soufflé, and niu moa ai. The last was a recipe for leftover chicken that casually began, “Saw the tops off six small fresh coconuts and scrape out half of the coconut meat.” The fact that I had never seen a fresh coconut, much less a truffle, a duck, or any kind of souffle, troubled me not at all; I liked knowing that such things were out in the world and that people were eating them.

Isn’t that refreshing?! The Editor in Chief of one of the most renowned food magazines in the world grew up just like us friends. She wasn’t eating truffled chicken as a toddler. So lets trust them during this journey ok, I’m scared too…but they are the experts.

So how did I do?! Well…let me just say, the mandolin is a MUST! Either that or your knife skills had better be on point…mine are not.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the cumin, and I knew I would have to just wait for the finished product because it is such a savory spice! But aren’t the stars in the middle of the apples so pretty?! The sifting is equally important to get even coating of the sugar mixture.

And into the oven they went, let me at this time please remind you that there will never be professional photography here, nor will my pictures be taken with a camera. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So forgive me photo geeks, this is my best. So how did they turn out? Well, again…the mandolin is a MUST…without it you will just have dehydrated fruit like I got. Not the best apple I have ever eaten, but it is probably just me. Sometimes I am weird with smells and I am not going to lie, I feel like my house smells like something terrible in South America. We can’t win them all though can we. It was fun and took very little time to prepare.

Stay tuned for my next recipe which I am very excited about…Cappuccino Brownies!