For 4 people; pastry: 200g flour, 140g cubed firm butter, 1 pinch salt, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1/2 cup water. 4 best quality firm apples, 50g butter, fine sugar and icing sugar; 4 tbsp acacia honey, calvados, lemon juice.
Place the ingredients for the dough in the mixer, but run it only as long as absolutely necessary: pieces of butter should still be visible in the finished dough. Cover the dough in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 2 hours. In the meantime, peel the apples, remove the cores, cut them into quarters and slice the quarters very thinly. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Roll out the dough very thinly and cut out 16 circles 12 cm in diameter. Place them on a buttered baking tray (or on baking parchment) and cover with the apple slices, brush with the butter, sprinkle lightly with sugar. Bake for 15 minutes at 220°. Then turn the cakes over (butter the baking tray again if necessary) and dust the reverse side with icing sugar. Bake under a hot grill or over a high heat until crispy. Remove and leave to cool for a quarter of an hour. Now layer 4 of the 16 cakes (apple side up) on each of 4 dessert plates. Just before serving, drizzle each with 1 tablespoon of warmed honey and sprinkle with Calvados and lemon juice. A lemon sorbet goes well with this - or a
10 cl Riesling, 150 g forest honey (or another, aromatic, not too sweet honey); 3 tbsp sugar, 1/2 vanilla pod, 5 egg yolks, 1/2 l cream.
Dissolve the honey in the wine. Mix egg yolks with sugar and honey wine; add slit vanilla bean. Whisk in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water until the mixture is pale and frothy. Remove from heat, scrape out and remove vanilla pod; place bowl in cold water, stir contents until cold. Whip the cream until stiff, fold it in, and put the parfait in the freezer overnight.
Honey is also needed for life
.According to the Bible, along with water, fire, iron, salt, milk, flour, grapes, oil, and clothing, honey is also among the ten things man needs to live. People quickly learned to collect the honey of wild bees; many peoples still do it this way today. In ancient times, honey was much more important than it is today. Probably for lack of availability of alternative sweeteners.
Honey is poorly thanked for its former indispensability, because it does not play a major role in our kitchens, strangely enough. After all, honey is a purely natural product, without fat and consequently without the dreaded cholesterol. It is not even compulsory on breakfast tables. Except at Christmas time, when honey plays a role in baking, it is often only brought out when people have a cold. Nevertheless, nowhere do people eat as much honey as in German-speaking countries. On the whole, however, beekeeping is on the decline, it has an old-fashioned image, and beekeeping is by no means easy, as inexperienced amateur beekeepers find out for themselves. To read up for instance with Hans Fallada in "Today with us to house ". Beekeeping is an apprenticeship, but most people are self-taught.
Like Robert Friedrich, who always wanted to have something to do with animals. After he once heard the bees buzzing cheerfully in the Black Forest at an altitude of 900 m even at Christmas, he decided to try it with them in his backyard in Mönchengladbach at the time. Meanwhile, he studied photography, worked as an advertising photographer and currently still works part-time in a photo shop.
Keeping bees according to the biodynamic principles of the DEMETER association does not lead to organic honey. In order to be able to produce it, whole areas of land would have to remain unfertilised and unsprayed, as bee pastures are difficult to fence in. Friedrich is therefore concerned with the type of husbandry, the conditions of which are easier to organise ecologically. For example, Robert Friedrich keeps his 100 colonies of "landrace" bees in wooden hives where no plastic can get at them, nor are they led by artificial queens, i.e. queens produced by embryonic transfer. All this reveals the coordinator of the "Bundesverband ökologische Bienenhaltung" visitor groups and school classes gladly.
He also sells honey, of course: from chestnuts, sunflowers, acacias, spring and summer flowers. And Friedrich points out the beneficial effects of local honey for pollen allergies: Solid honey, i.e. honey that has not been treated with heat, still contains pollen. If one eats it moderately, inoculates itself so to speak with it, "setzt itself the organism with it auseinander", and the allergic reactions abate.
But above all delicious meals can be prepared with honey. Not just desserts by any means, but this one, "Le jeu de Pommes", lives up to its auspicious name. We owe "The Game of Apples" to top French chefs, the Troisgros brothers. A lemon sorbet goes well with this - but why not a honey parfait?
DEMETER beekeeping
Robert Friedrich
Im Kirschgarten 10
55263 Wackernheim (near Ingelheim/Rhein)
Phone: 06132 / 56738
Opening hours: Sale by tel. arrangement