Country Living (UK)

FROM TREE TO TABLE

Inspired by the beauty and productivi­ty of British orchards, photograph­er and cookery writer Stuart Ovenden has created a range of recipes for baking with apples and pears

- Photograph­s by stuart ovenden food and drink editor alison walker

Inspired by the productivi­ty of British orchards, cookery writer Stuart Ovenden has created a range of recipes

some of my earliest memories are of the orchard in the village with a crab apple tree planted at each end. I often wondered why the crab apples were there; to me, they seemed to offer no merit to the casual scrumper nor (and more importantl­y) the orchard owner. I know now why they are planted in commercial orchards; they have a long flowering period in spring and are terrific pollinatio­n partners for cultivated apples. The walk to school took us through trees festooned with blossom in spring, heavy crops of fruit hanging off branches in late summer and the muggy ferment of the last days of autumn, air thick with dust and vinegar. I often think of an orchard as an almost self-contained environmen­t; there’s something appealing about the vivid polarisati­on of the seasons that it offers up each year. It feels only natural to want to spend as much time as possible in these beautiful, complex spaces.

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