2 1/2 cups water
4 cups sugar
1 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup fruit juice*, whatever flavor you like (grape juice, orange juice, etc.)
1 tsp cream of tartar
a few drops of food coloring (optional)
toasted chopped nuts (optional)
oil for coating pan
powdered sugar for coating
Bring water to a boil; stir in sugar until thoroughly dissolved. Mix cornstarch with juice and cream of tartar, stirring to remove any lumps. Gradually stir into boiling syrup. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, 20 min or to 220F. Add food coloring and nuts if desired. Pour into an oiled 7" square cake pan and let stand until set and cooled. Cut into 1" squares and dust with powdered sugar (one method is to shake a few squares at a time in a plastic bag filled with powdered sugar).
*Make sure you've got 100% juice, preferably unsweetened; juice drinks can be as much as 90% sugar water and what you're really after here is the flavor, you'll be adding plenty of sugar yourself.
Adapted from something called Eastern Mediterranean Cooking; sorry, I didn't record the full citation.
So,
a few weeks ago I was standing in line, waiting my turn at... let's call it "the miscellaneous station" at the food bank, where they give out oddball items like crackers, pop, salad dressing, or that awfu... I mean, ahem, that interesting "baconesque" popcorn. I could see around the couple of people in front of me, in a basket of assorted strange things, a box of Aplets and Cotlets. Yum! But there was only one box, would one of the people in front of me snag it? The first one chose coffee; bleh, but OK, that's popular. Good. The next one chose... chiles en adobo? Really, canned peppers over Aplets and Cotlets? Well, no accounting for taste and all that, and my gain, but really? Of course, once I got it home I saw that it was a little over a year past its pull date, but it was still perfectly good, only a little dried out at the edges.
Then I remembered I'd once copied off a recipe for lokoum, the original sweet that inspired Aplets and Cotlets, so I dug it out to share.
My grandmother (the southern matriarch one, not the butterboo one) lived in Cashmere for many years, and when I was about in my "tweens" she took me on the Aplets and Cotlets factory tour. In those days they only made the two products, and their factory was a smallish place in the middle of town; I'm sure they've grown and probably moved since then. They've certainly added more products. The thing is, that tour was one of the first times I was conscious of a product being local and localness being significant. Of course, at the time I thought it was a national brand and was impressed; now I think it's even cooler that it's a special regional delicacy.
And yes, I know some people think it's inedible. Some people like nasty things like coffee and blueberries and cream cheese frosting, so we'll all just have to agree to disagree and rejoice in our diversity. Anything else would be boring.
Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.
