OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for a warm triple apple-cinnamon babka glazed with cider icing.

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Now that the leaves are losing their chlorophyll, allowing the fiery glow of carotenoids to shine through, and yes, fall, the mind naturally wanders to coziness. Apples, colorful dried corn and crispy strolls are on the menu, all layered with plenty of pumpkin spice. Of course, pumpkin spice (or pumpkin pie spice, specifically) isn’t strictly for flavoring spooky-season lattes, pies and candles (and it really doesn’t belong in all the things into which food companies try to shove it) — these spices have been used and traded along the Silk Road for centuries, originally used to season meats and roasts for royal tables. But how did spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice become associated with fall and winter in the first place? Read on to find out!

Help us grow our subscriber community for a chance to win a special gift box from ‘Superabundant’

This is the FINAL WEEK of our “Grow Our Garden” campaign — your last chance to win an incredible assortment of local goodies handpicked by our team of food lovers. We want to thank you — our tremendous subscribers — for being an essential part of “Superabundant” and ask you to help us keep this garden growing.

Invite your friends to subscribe to the “Superabundant” newsletter. Until Oct. 20th, when they fill out the form, you’ll BOTH be entered for a chance to take home a basket of delicious Northwest-made comestibles. Send the link to all your fellow food and beverage lovers, growers and creators and watch our community plot continue to grow into a spectacular garden.

Refer a friend now

Note from Heather: One of the goodies in the gift basket will be from my own garden!

A big week for fall crops

🍻 Hip hops hooray

In the 9th Oregon Beer Awards Fresh Hop competition last weekend, 47 breweries and their 137 entries vied for honors; The New School reported on the medal winners. And Cascade PBS shared the story of the Loza family, who run the country’s only Latinx-owned hops farm in the Yakima Valley and host a Mexican craft brewing fest there.

Watch the Hops episode of “Superabundant”

🍾 Yes way, Chardonnay

The Portland Business Journal reports that Oregon’s crop of chardonnay grapes jumped a whopping 52% between 2022 and 2023, amounting to a total of 10,500 tons of grapes. How will the 2024 crop compare? The numbers aren’t in yet, but so far, winemakers in the Willamette Valley are reporting outstanding fruit quality thanks to a long, mild summer.

Watch the Chardonnay episode of “Superabundant”

🌰 A beacon through the haze(lnuts)

After 2022’s bumper crop (and resulting catastrophic price plummet), Oregon hazelnuts are back to business as usual. Maybe even better than usual, in fact; thanks to a stinkbug infestation impacting Turkey’s crop, Oregon’s exports (and prices) are up. The Statesman Journal has the report.

🎃 It’s gourd-gantuan

In mighty gourd news, Oregon boasts not one, but two of the largest pumpkins in the United States, reports KOIN News. Hank the Tank, a 2,453-pound specimen grown by Jim Sherwood in Mulino took home the nation’s top honors — and a prize of $9 per pound (that’s $22,017, which should keep Sherwood in top-quality fertilizer for at least a few years). Russ Pugh of Eugene produced the second-place pumpkin, weighing in at 2,301 pounds. But is it seaworthy? (This is your reminder that the West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta is coming up on Oct. 20.)

Coquille Tribe opens Oregon’s first tribal distillery

In the spring, we shared news that the Coquille Indian Tribe would launch Oregon’s first tribes-owned distillery, and OPB’s Kyra Buckley recently paid the Mill Casino Hotel in Coos Bay facility a visit. Check out her story here.

Last week I was strolling around my neighborhood park when I smelled something familiar. It was unmistakably pungent and Epoisses-esque, with a slightly rancid top note. No, I don’t live near a durian grove — it’s the female ginkgos, dropping their puke-scented fruits all over the ground. While I usually have to battle squirrels and my neighborhood’s Korean aunties for city park chestnuts (also very much in season), the delicious nuts inside those stinky orange fruits are mine, all mine! (Next time I’ll bring gloves — these didn’t make my hands shed, but collecting them is a pretty messy sport.) After scrubbing the nuts clean, I toasted them in a skillet and cracked them open to reveal the buttery, tender (and not at all barf-flavored) kernels within. If I go back for more, I’ll try them in a mushroom-rice pilaf.

Aside from the exciting urban ginkgo nuts and the wild mushrooms popping up in wooded areas, markets are the usual autumn business of apples, pears, figs, shelling beans and winter squash, but keep an eye out for quinces, medlars, persimmons and pomegranates too. Peppers, tomatillos and ground cherries (a close tomatillo relative) are also still great, and crucifers (especially purple cauliflower and stalks of Brussels sprouts) are ready for cooler-evening suppers.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ I rubbed a 2-pound boneless leg of lamb with Caucasian spices (khmeli suneli, blue fenugreek, cumin, coriander) and slow-roasted it with shallots and homegrown pumpkin until it was fall-apart tender. I served it in a big pile on a giant pita from my new favorite Mingala market, Best Fresh, with some Bulgarian feta and pickled beets on the side.

✨ A friend dropped off a bunch of spent mushroom blocks from a commercial grower she knows — the innards make great fertilizer, but the blocks also tend to keep producing mushrooms for a bit, so I made a lovely mushroom stroganoff with blue oyster mushrooms and spätzle from what I could harvest.

✨ Leftover lamb became the Uzbek/Uyghur noodle soup laghman, using fresh Korean udon that was already in the fridge instead of hand-pulled noodles. Since it was a bit cooler that day, I cooked it in a large wok set over my backyard fire pit — it feels proper to stir a large cauldron of something bubbly this time of year.

Recipe: Triple apple-cinnamon babka with cider icing

Ever wonder what would happen if you combined cinnamon babka, apple cider donuts and a caramel sticky bun? (No? It’s OK, you probably spend your time thinking about practical things.) We’re in the midst of the High Holy Days, so a round, sweet, challah-type loaf with apples seemed appropriate (when you’re done fasting, anyway). Once buttery caramelized apples have entered the chat, cinnamon is no longer the lesser babka compared to chocolate!

In the medieval era, cinnamon was amongst the most elite of seasonings — a queen of spices meant only for the wealthiest tables. Sweet, warm spices like cinnamon, allspice, mace, nutmeg, clove and ginger didn’t just make an appearance on the roast pheasant; these spices were ready to straighten out your humors, too.

In the cold and damp of the fall and winter months, 13th-century physicians prescribed warming spices not only to enhance the nutrition and digestibility of appropriate seasonal foods (and in the Middle Ages, this was a lot of roast fowl) but to balance the melancholic or phlegmatic humors that still seem to plague us today (though now we call these by the decidedly less-fun names, “depression” and “the common cold”). And like rhinoviruses and seasonal affective disorder, “pumpkin spice” stuck around. Whether or not these spices improve one’s mental health or resistance to whatever bug is going around is still being uncovered by science — but we know for a fact that it makes apples and baked goods taste like a million bucks. Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

Babka

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup warm milk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 tablespoons butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground allspice

1 tsp fine sea salt

2 ¼ teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast

Filling

4 tablespoons butter, softened, divided

2 cups peeled, cored and diced tart/sweet apple (such as Braeburn, Pacific Rose, Pink Lady or Cosmic Crisp)

Pinch of salt

⅓ cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ cup apple butter (store-bought is fine)

Glaze

1 cup raw, unfiltered apple cider (not apple juice)

1 cup powdered sugar

Instructions

1. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer with the dough hook attached, combine the babka ingredients. Mix on medium until fully combined, then increase speed to medium-high and knead for 7-8 minutes, until a soft, sticky dough is formed. [If not using a stand mixer, stir the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl until a shaggy dough is formed, then knead for 10 minutes on a lightly floured surface until a soft and sticky dough is formed.] Don’t worry if it seems like a springy ball doesn’t come together. Move the dough to a buttered bowl, cover, and allow the dough to rise in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in size, about 1-1 ½ hours.
2. While the dough is rising, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a medium-sized skillet over medium heat, then add the apples and a pinch of salt. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle about a tablespoon of the mixture over the apples. Saute the apples until they’re lightly golden brown and tender but still have texture, about 6-7 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the apples cool to room temperature.
3. While you’re cooking the apples and the dough is rising, bring the apple cider to a boil in a small saucepan, then lower the heat to medium and simmer until the cider has thickened and reduced down to about ¼ cup, around 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
4. When the dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured surface and roll it to a rectangle about 16 x 24 inches. Using an offset spatula or back of a spoon, spread the remaining softened butter evenly across the dough, sprinkle with some of the cinnamon sugar, then spread the apple butter evenly on top. Scatter the cooked apples evenly over the top of the butter and apple butter, then sprinkle with another few pinches of cinnamon sugar.
5. Roll the dough away from you, using a bench scraper as needed to keep it from sticking to your work surface, until you have a nice, snug log. Slice the log down the center lengthwise (to make two 24-inch hemi-logs, not two 12-inch logs) and set the two halves side by side, cut side up. Pinch the top together and twist together the two pieces to make a pretty helical rope, then roll the twisted log into a spiral.
6. Line a 10-inch cast iron skillet with two pieces of overlapping parchment paper and slide the babka into the skillet. Sprinkle on the remaining cinnamon sugar, lightly cover the babka with a tea towel and return to the warm spot to get nice and puffy, another 45 minutes or so.
7. In the last 10 minutes of proofing, preheat the oven to 350º. When the babka has risen enough, bake until it’s golden brown and a thermometer inserted in the center reads 190º-200º, about 45 minutes to an hour (depending on how wet the apple filling was, this can vary, but you might need to drape a sheet of foil over the top halfway through to prevent it from overbrowning). Grab the parchment to lift the babka out of the skillet, then transfer to a cooling rack.
8. When the babka has cooled (lukewarm to warm is best), whisk together the reduced apple cider with the powdered sugar until a smooth icing comes together. Either drizzle the icing over the finished babka or brush it on evenly, depending on your preference.

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