Apple and Sultana Jalousie

Hooray! Bramley apples are in the shops! Big knobbly monsters with loads of blemishes and discolourations, heavy with juice and so ripe they're almost tacky to the touch. Autumn approaches chaps. And hooray (again), the Cookbook Challenge theme from My Food Trail this week is the humble apple.







I thought I'd cross another one of the recipes off my to-bake list (suggestions welcome), this time from the trusty Baking Bible, which I hold in the highest esteem. Today I made apple and sultana jalousie, and I'm delighted with the results.








It was supposed to be apple and raisin jalousie, but I prefer sultanas. The method is fairly straight-forward, the rough-puff stuff turned out to be a lot easier than I had anticipated. You just have to be patient (tricky for me...) with the resting and the chilling and the pre-heating and all that jazz. The filling is a joy - Bramley apples cooked until tender with butter, lemon juice and sugar, with brandy and raisins stirred through. Yummy. The assembly is OK too, you first cook a thin rectangle of your pastry until crisp, then spoon on the filling when cool. The top sheet of pastry is rolled out, then folded gently in half and some sharp incisions made through the folded part, leaving a border intact. The Baking Bible explains this very well, so don't let this step put you off. Basically you end up with a crisp 'lattice'-type effort, with the appley juices bubbling up through the pastry gaps as the jalousie cooks. Sweet 'rough-puff' pastry, tender juicy apple and plump raisins spiked with lemon juice and brandy. Naughty but nice... and seasonal to boot! I number among those oddities that prefer to eat apple pastries cold (well, room temperature), rather than warm, and the jalousie was perfect this way.

We're planning to go blackberry-picking this afternoon (if they're ripe), and if we do I suspect we will be eating these as we pick. I bought way too many Bramleys and a big bunch of rhubarb, so stay tuned for apple and blackberry tarts, pies, crumbles, pastries, flans, icecreams...!