Heirloom Apples

Pairing Cider with Food: Green Curry

Curry with Eden Ciders can Peak Bloom

Recipe by Sunny Gandara 

We like to imagine our ciders on your table, shared with friends and loved ones alongside an amazing home cooked meal. Like wine varieties, cider has some natural pairings – foods that just jive with the lively bubbles of a dry sparkling cider, or compliment the sweetness of an Ice Cider. Without a doubt, veggies and cider go together like PB&J, so when we met Sunny Gandara – a wine enthusiast who crafts vegan food pairings for a decadent, plant based dining experience – we knew we had to collaborate on some cider pairings.

Sunny Gandara wants to make eating delicious, nutritious, vegan meals more accessible to those who may want to explore a plant based diet without sacrificing flavor, diversity, and of course – drink pairings. She’s been vegan for 8 years and a chef for 15, with a deep understanding of how to make foods taste familiar and choosing wines that wow the eater and that are kinder to the planet. She was the Global Wine Director for Matthew Kenney Cuisine, a worldwide plant-based restaurant and hospitality group and now runs two blogs dedicated to sharing her passion for food and drink pairings to those looking to explore – SunnyGandara.com and Arctic Grub. 

We absolutely jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with Sunny, and she generously crafted three recipes for us based on our ciders, which we’ll be releasing over the course of this spring. But really, don’t stop with these recipes! If your looking to add more plant based meals to your diet, or looking to explore a vegan diet, we cannot recommend Sunny enough.

And so enters the first recipe from collaboration: Peak Bloom and Green Curry! A quick way to get a symphony of flavors on your plate with minimal effort curry is a people pleasing cider match made in heaven. Peak Bloom is a semi-dry cider, about as sweet as biting into an apple. Light and refreshing, it matched beautifully with a plant based curry – perfect for a gathering of friends with various dietary needs or a healthy, decadent meal to enjoy for a weekend lunch.

So, grab some friends, a pack of Peak Bloom, and dive into this Vegan Green Curry Recipe!

Green Curry and Peak Bloom Cider

You’re going to need:

2 tablespoons coconut or vegetable oil, divided
2 x 15 oz (425 g) cans organic full fat coconut milk
3-4 tablespoon store bought green curry paste or 1 recipe homemade green curry paste*
1 cup broccoli florets
2 small carrots, peeled and sliced
1 red bell pepper , diced
1 cup snow peas
1 small can bamboo shoots, drained (optional)
1 cup baby corn (optional)
1 cup vegetable stock
1 tablespoon Brown sugar
2 sprigs basil leaves or 3-4 kaffir lime leaves
3-4 small baby bok choy bunches
Salt to taste

 

If you want to go all the way, make your own green curry paste you can find the recipe on Sunny’s blog, otherwise nobody will judge you if you just buy a jar at the store!

 

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan or wok, then add in the vegetables – broccoli, carrots, red bell pepper and lastly the snow peas. Season with a good pinch of kosher or sea salt and sauté quickly on high heat just for a couple of minutes until colors are vibrant. Remove from heat and set aside. 

2. Add another tablespoon of oil into the hot wok, then add in the green curry paste and saute for a few seconds in the oil.

3. Next add in a cup of vegetable stock and stir to combine into the curry along with a tablespoon of brown sugar and finally the cans of coconut milk. 

4. Stir to combine all the ingredients. Once combined, add in the salt, stir and allow the mixture to thicken a little and come to a light boil. 

5. Once the mixture comes to a boil, add in some torn basil leaves and the stir fried vegetables. Combine and heat through. Serve the curry with a side of jasmine rice and a can of Eden Cider Peak Bloom!

If you want to explore more Vegan recipes paired with decadent drinks, head on over to Sunny’s website.

Explore Vegan Recipes

 

 

 

What is an Heirloom Apple?

Blue Pearmain, Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet…these are all heirloom apple varieties you won’t find in your local grocery store. But, what does “heirloom apple variety” even mean, and why is that characteristic important to holistic growers and cideries?

There is no official definition, but Heirloom apples varieties can be generalized as varieties that do not have the qualities required of the global commodity agriculture system for grocery store fresh-eating apples. They are boutique apples with other appealing characteristics that have caused humans to continue to propagate and nurture them. The commodity world has winnowed varieties down to the same 15- 20 standard varieties that are now grown all around the world – Europe, Asia, North and South America, so you can have a perfect-looking crisp-textured apple at the store 365 days per year no matter where on the globe you live. By contrast, before the mid 20th century there were thousands of varieties grown locally for many different purposes – eating, sauce, drying, baking, and of course cider. “The Apples of New York”, published in 1904, identified over 1,000 varieties being grown just in that state.

Stembridge Cluster at Eden

Every heirloom variety starts its journey serendipitously, a seed cross pollinated that found root and thrived. People liked the fruit, named it, and began to cultivate and grow that new variety. Many heirloom varieties were grown and cultivated specifically for cider making purposes, prized for their soft tannins, sharp qualities, or sugar content. Others were grafted simply because they make a delicious pie – which is reason enough for most! You can often find some heirloom varieties at this time of year if you look hard enough – at a farmers market stand, in a local store, or in delicious, small batch cider.

Heirloom varieties that are great for cider often have significantly more acidity, tannin or sweetness than typical grocery store apples. As much as 100% more, and therefore more great flavor. So a completely dry cider from these varieties doesn’t taste just thin and acidic, but can have rich apple character. Just the way you don’t want your dry pinot noir wine to taste like grape juice, but you do want it to exhibit fruit character and aroma, not just acid and tannin.

Making cider from these apples is a privilege. Each glass made with heirloom apples is a celebration of flavor, a reflection of the resilient nature of fruit trees and the people that tend them. We started Eden back in the harvest of 2007, when we developed our Heirloom Blend Ice Cider, which combines15 different heirloom varieties together and, using our naturally cold climate, produces a rich, delicious Ice Cider with perfectly balanced acidity and sweetness.

We’ve learned and grown alongside these trees, and hope you enjoy and embrace their fruit through cider shared at your table.

To learn more about the heirloom apple varieties used in our ciders, you can visit our apples page.