Italian Apple-""mele""

""Una mela al giorno leva il medico di torno""
English translation: An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

In Italy, the northern regions are apple country, where warm, sunny days and cool nights make for particularly favorable growing conditions.The steeply terraced, heavily forested hills give way to a lush green valley below, producing what locals claims are the finest apples of Italy. Rosa Gentile, Mantovano, Napoleone, Rosso Nobile, Bianco d'Inverno, lady apple, and Decio

Val di non Valley

Api/Pomme d' Api/Lady Apple
is a variety said to have originated in Roman times. It is a very small, hard, winter apple that can be a beautiful red on one side and a pale or white on the other. It is grown more for show than for eating. The flavour seems to be in the skin only.

Decio
is an Italian variety that has a very ancient origin stretching back to classical Roman times. It is a small apple, crisp and refreshing but without much of a flavour. Its great value comes in it being a late keeper best picked green towards the end of the year and eaten in the spring. By such time, it will have turned creamy and red.


The need for an apple brand, became apparent at the end of the 1980s, when the fruit growers of the Val di Sole and Val di Non realized that, on the Italian fruit market, there were three times as many apples known as "Val di Non Apples" than the real quantity produced in the said valleys. Hence, the producers decided to come together under a common brand name. These were many small-scale local producers used to practicing the same production techniques, already organized into agricultural cooperatives with advanced packaging techniques.

The fruits to be produced by this new Consortium, for which the brand name "Melinda".


Torta di mele a raggi **recipe translated from Italian

Butter - 125 g

flour - 250 gr

Milk - 150 ml

baking powder - 2 1/2 teaspoon

Lemons - 2

apples - 800 g

Salt - 1 pinch

Eggs - 3

Vanilla - 1 packet

Sugar - 125 gr

sugar - cane sugar 2-3 tablespoons


Turn oven to 350 degrees. Cream together the eggs, sugar, the vanilla and salt. Sift the flour and baking powder, and add a little at a time, stirring, the mixture of butter, alternating with the addition of milk, add the grated rind of two lemons .

(1) Grease and flour a cake pan to Czechs opening diameter of 26-28 cm-springfoam!
(2) and the batter
(3)Leveled with a spatula the mixture well into the pan
(4) Wash apples, remove the core with their special tool
(5) then peel and cut into slices not too thin
(6)Arrange the apple slices ray starting from the outside and forming two circles, one inside the other
(7-8) Sprinkle the surface of the cake of brown sugar and bake the cake for about 50-60 minutes
(9) When the cake is cooked ( pricked with a toothpick: if the latter will remain on the surface residues of the cake batter will not be fully cooked) remove from oven and remove it from the mold by placing it on a serving platter, let cool and then sprinkle icing sugar.




To prepare apple pie ray, you can use apples in your house, or buy whatever you like, provided they are fragrant and juicy. Usually, between the apples on the market, those most commonly used for this kind of dessert are: Golden, with thin skin deep yellow, and the flesh tender, juicy and fragrant golden-yellow, the Fuji from light to dark red skin on a yellow green, with crisp, juicy flesh and sweet, sour and aromatic, the Royal Gala, has two-tone skin, red and yellow, medium sizes, order a pulp, crispy and juicy taste sweet.