The Array Of Citrus Ina Garten Adds To Her Apple Crisp

Celebrity chef Ina Garten of "Barefoot Contessa" fame has probably covered every major dessert at least once across her many cookbooks and long-running television show. Her apple crisp recipe appeared on an episode of "Barefoot Contessa," and dates at least as far back as her cookbook "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" from 2001, and it always includes a couple of extra ingredients: a small amount of shredded and juiced citrus.

In Garten's method, you take both an orange and a lemon and zest them into the bowl of apples before chopping them in half and juicing them over the bowl. By zesting them, you're grating the unpeeled, unchopped citrus fruit so that small shavings from the peel garnish the apple crisp before you add the top layer of flour, oatmeal, and sugar. Compared to the large number of apples used, the citrus adds a slight sour tang to counteract the apples' sweetness; Garten's ten-serving recipe calls for five pounds of McIntosh or Macoun apples and just a single orange and lemon (zest to taste, but you won't want too much for reasons we'll get into). When you're done, Garten insists on serving vanilla ice cream with the finished product.

Garten calls citrus a great way to add more flavor to apples, and the zest adds some extra texture and concentrated flavor, which comes from the oil in the fruit's peel. The peel is also more aromatic than the juicy interior. In contrast, squeezing the juice from a lemon or orange adds a less intense flavor but some much-needed moisture. On a purely aesthetic level, citrus juice also helps prevent the apples from browning during the baking process due to oxidation because citric acid is a handy anti-oxidant.

If intense, pulpy zest doesn't interest you, then you can still get a similar flavor by substituting the peel shavings for even more juice: a teaspoon of zest is about equal in flavor to two whole tablespoons of juice because the juice's flavor is that much less concentrated. Microwaving citrus fruits for about 20 seconds also helps you squeeze more juice out of them.

The citrus trick appears to work because Garten's similar deep-dish apple pie also involves juicing and zesting oranges and lemons for the exact same reasons. For extra fruits, the "Barefoot Contessa" apple and pear crisp involves substituting two pounds of apples for Bosc pears and then adding citrus.