Recommendations
Baked apple and almonds with Pedro Rodriguez Sherry Medium
Out of the oven come apples that have baked for forty minutes, filled with date, raisin and flaked almonds and sprinkled with cinnamon and aniseed. The medium sherry sets against it an amber-coloured wine that comes from the same corner: baked apple and cinnamon.
From the shelf
The bottle
Pedro Rodriguez Sherry Medium comes from Spain and is a medium. According to the Consejo Regulador, medium is not a style of ageing in its own right but a blend: dry generoso wine is mixed with naturally sweet wine or with concentrated must, after which the wine ends up with between 5 and 115 grams of residual sugar per litre at 15 to 22 percent alcohol. Our own bottle page describes this bottle as an amber-coloured wine with aromas of cinnamon and baked apple, sweet and supple, with a pleasant finish. The bottle is 15 percent ABV and comes in one litre.
The combination
Why this works together
This combination is one of repetition rather than contrast, and with a dessert that is the safest route. Our own bottle page literally names cinnamon and baked apple as aromas for this medium, and that is exactly what is in the baking dish. An echo like that makes wine and dish extend each other’s flavour instead of fighting for attention. Then there is the sweetness level: a baked apple with date and raisin is sweet, and a wine that is drier than the plate will taste sour next to it. A medium brings just enough residual sweetness to stay level without making the dessert cloying, and at 15 percent alcohol the wine stays light enough for a dish that has hardly any fat itself. Finally, the oxidative part of the blend picks up the almond; the Consejo also mentions desserts for medium.
At the table
The dish
- For 4 people
- Ready in 50 minutes
- Type dessert
What you need
- 4 sweet but firm apples
- 4 dates, finely chopped
- 20 raisins
- 60 g flaked almonds or almond sticks
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- a few aniseeds or 1 star anise
- 4 tablespoons sweet wine or orange juice
- honey, to taste
How to make it
- Preheat the oven to 175 degrees. Wash the apples, dry them and choose ones that stay upright.
- Carefully remove the core with an apple corer without going through the bottom, so that you get a cavity.
- Coarsely chop the dates, the raisins and the almonds and mix them with the cinnamon, the anise, the wine or orange juice and a little honey to taste.
- Fill the apples with that mixture and cut a light ring in the skin all around with the tip of a knife, so that the apple does not burst open.
- Put the apples in an ovenproof dish and pour a layer of water on the bottom.
- Bake them for 40 to 50 minutes, until soft but still holding their shape.
- Stir the juices at the bottom of the dish loose with a little extra liquid into a syrup and pour it over the apples. Sprinkle them with a little more cinnamon if you like.
In the glass
Serving
Serve this medium at 12 to 14 degrees in a white wine glass, filled about a third. Too cold and precisely the cinnamon-like aroma that forms the bridge to the dessert disappears. An opened medium keeps well for a long time: the Consejo reckons on about two months for blended and oxidatively aged sherry with the bottle closed and stored cool. With this litre bottle that is also practical, because you will not finish it in one evening.
All about Pedro Rodriguez Sherry MediumBack to Recommendations from ’t Bockje
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