Front Burner
“Ciderhouse Cookbook” teaches you how to press some of your own, and how to use it in many dishes.
CreditCreditSonny Figueroa/The New York Times
Let’s say you have no intention of pressing your own cider. This new book from Jonathan Carr, whose family owned a farm in Ireland for generations and who is now the owner, with Nicole Blum, of Carr’s Ciderhouse in Hadley, Mass., begins with a step-by-step illustrated rundown on how ciders, both hard and sweet, are made, and can be made at home. But you can go directly to the heart of the matter, cooking with cider. Why not braise beets in cider, baste roast chicken with it, add it to seafood soup or lots of slaws, and tuck apples into canelés? Cider vinegar, cider jelly and cider syrup, which figure in many recipes, can also be prepared in your kitchen, and you can learn how to mix and serve pommeau, a French aperitif combining cider and Calvados.
“Ciderhouse Cookbook” by Jonathan Carr, Nicole Blum and Andrea Blum (Storey Publishing, $19.95)
Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the kind of business Jonathan Carr’s family owned in Ireland. It was a farm, not a cidery. It also omitted the name of one of the authors. She is Andrea Blum.
Florence Fabricant is a food and wine writer. She writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns, as well as the Pairings column, which appears alongside the monthly wine reviews. She has also written 12 cookbooks.
Advertisement
