KITCHEN KEEPSAKES
Cooking apples, self-raising flour, salt, butter, milk and brown sugar: combined together in just the right proportions, these six, humble ingredients create a favourite, decadent dish that invokes precious, childhood memories for Naomi Sherman.
When she was a little girl, her dad would, every now and then, stand at the kitchen bench and make his mother’s baked apple roll. He didn’t always make it for a special occasions, Sherman recalls, but the memories the Lucaston recipe developer and food photographer now has of sitting down with her family to devour this comforting dish, are special for her.
There was a wonderful lead-up to the dessert feasting Sherman remembers with spiced apple smells wafting through their childhood home. She recalls the excitement of leaning over the dining room table to reach the baking tray in the middle, clutching a big spoon so she could scoop out her own portion she’d then dollop with cream. The dough was crispy baked on top and soaked and syrupy on the bottom.
Her grandmother Ann Bickford’s recipe, known in the family as Grandma’s Baked Apple Roll, is a basic dough spread with grated apple mixed with sultanas and spices, and then rolled up and cut into sections and bathed in a brown, sugary syrup. The end result is a delicious caramel flavour that is buttery and sweet and spiced.
When Sherman shares this memory from one of the pages in her stunning, coffee-table quality cookbook Edible Heirlooms, released this month, her whole face lights up. “It’s everything good and comforting in this world,” she says. “Even looking at the photo makes me want to make it right now.”
Food evokes powerful memories and, in Edible Heirlooms, Sherman celebrates key recipes from her own family as well as the stories that go with them. She made each recipe, and then styled the finished product to photograph. She did the same for the recipes she collected from friends and other foodies.
Together, the recipes and stories are what she describes as an eclectic mix that will sling-shot readers back in time. Seeing their stories and recipes in print has brought some of the contributors to tears, she says.
“It’s that nostalgia. We all have such strong connections with particular dishes. I’d like to think that other people are preserving their own family recipes that evoke their own special memories. And I hope my book helps make them to stop and think about what those recipes might be for them.”
Sherman is frustrated she doesn’t have her grandmother’s scone recipe because she says it was never written down.
“It’s a vivid childhood memory that I will never be able to recreate,” she says.
“These recipes are important family heirlooms, just like your grandmother’s crystal glasses,” Sherman says. “But these kind of heirlooms can be recreated and enjoyed over and over again, which is even better.”
Edible Heirlooms: Favourite recipes from Family, Friends and Foodies by Naomi Sherman is available at Minimax in Hobart, Baker & Co in Geeveston, and Boho at the Beach in Kingston, or through naomishermanfoodcreative.com, $44.95