If you are a cuisinomane (a Quebecoise amateur food connoisseur), look no further than this recipe of apple turnovers cherished across generations, made with many hands and ingredients chosen with love and enjoyed with family, old and new.
Ingredients
- 1 roundtrip ticket to Québec City, Canada
- 4 hands (the more, the better)
- 1 source of heat and 1 of cold
- 30 minutes of care and 30 more to enjoy
- 2 apples, about a cup of sugar, some salt, a dash of vanilla
- 1 old family recipe and a host family of 5
Directions
- Find a cooking instructor in Old Québec City, preferably one who tells stories through her hands. If you can’t find one that will take you in for the week, follow along here — it’s almost as good as the real thing.
- Mme Florence already had the puff pastry made the night before, though she said that one from the marché (local grocery store) would suffice just fine, too. After a morning of language classes, a daily visit to that shop brought the fresh scents of produce in my direction alongside an array of Québec delicacies. A special blend of cooking salts made its way into each basket at the register.
- Together, we cut a few apples into small pieces, almost like dividing up the old city into its individual shops and restaurants. We could hear the music playing outside, acrobats setting up for their evening shows and musicians connecting microphones to portable speakers as they ran vocal warmups dressed as Einstein and Monroe on the boardwalk. I told her about the classic poutine and onion soup I had tried the night before. She dismissed these “delicacies,” saying that I would try the real vegetable onion soup passed down from her grandmother’s family that evening instead.
- I melted and browned a tablespoon of butter in a pot on the stove, its metal handle decorated with engravings and floral patterns — a family heirloom I was lucky enough to hold.
- Once browned, we quickly added in the apples, a pinch of salt, a drop of vanilla extract and some sugar. Mesure avec ton coeur, she would repeat — measure with your heart. Today, this meant a little under a cup of sugar.
- As we stirred the apple filling until the pieces softened, she asked me about my first week here. She knew it was my first time abroad on my own. I recounted the much-anticipated journey to the Chute Montmorency, a waterfall whose pictures I marveled at in the pages of my middle school textbook back in Baltimore. The rush of water below cleared my mind of all thoughts, and the stark beauty of the mountains rendered me in awe. The scent of the slightly salted water mixed with the sweetness of syrup and apples melting in the pot to my left, taking me back to this long-awaited rendezvous. Almost done.
- A few more stirs remaining, five minutes done and five to go. Ma famille d’accueil! I laughed. How have I not yet told you about my host family? Translated directly into English, it means a family of welcome, and they truly were, opening their arms and those of the city for the few weeks I breathed in the Québec air. We shared stories back and forth, and the mixture caramelized a little more than intended.
- We rolled out the apples, now soft and glazed light brown, on the dough and dropped the steaming filling into oval-shaped pieces, taking a spoon to our lips for the small bit remaining. Folding the dough over and crimping the edges with a fork, she told me to berce-le comme un bébé as I carried the chaussons to the paper-lined tray — cradle it like a baby, so that none of the fillings fall out.
- She turned to me and said that a little bit of cold never did anything wrong, disregarding the few months of warmth left before footsteps would be dampened by snow and scarves would soften the biting chill of winter. I gave the chaussons a cold breath of air in the freezer as I turned the oven to 200℃ and recalculated the Fahrenheit equivalent I would use at home — 390°F. As the oven’s temperature climbed, we cleaned up the kitchen and called the family down. 20 minutes! The chilled chaussons were coated with an egg wash and small slits to let the steam out while baking — simple lines, a geometric pattern and a heart: plus interessant, non? More interesting, no? She was one to draw the beauty out of the simple, though she was tough with her love.
- A simple maple glaze was stirred together in the corner in secrecy, then drizzled atop the chaussons once they’d achieved their light golden color after twenty minutes in the oven.
As I sunk my teeth into the steaming dough and sweet apple filling, I understood the beauty in its simplicity. Each bite reminded me of my family’s old apple charlotta recipe (three ingredients and three apples), intuitive comfort, a reconnection with the past and a recentering of the immediate present.
As I looked around the kitchen, I saw this manifest in its entirety: The old cookbook at the table’s edge overlooking this quotidienne yet magical moment; the little children impatient for their chaussons to cool, sticky glaze dripping onto their hands and the syrup on their mouths catching the sun as their sly smiles and laughs lit up the room; the grandparents methodically biting at the crust with years of expertise devising the right angle to not let any drop of maple fall; the parents taking a breath in and out, a quick bite of rejuvenation as they continue on with their busy days.
Mme Florence sat in her chair, rocking back and forth; a slow nod of approval indicated a fulfilling afternoon.
The chausson’s real recipe is hidden within if you look closely between the lines. If you want to feel it, though, you’ll have to recreate it in its entirety. Start with the people, then the dough or with the first ingredient above.
Bon appetit!
Lana Milman is a junior from Baltimore, Md. majoring in Neuroscience and French.
