KICK Recipe Contest Submission #1: Crabapple Mojito

I love the internet! A woman named Sophie, with her own food blog Key Ingredient, invited me to submit a recipe for her September Key Ingredient Cook's Kitchen (KICK) contest. Recipes had to be original and the key ingredient of apples and/or peaches.

What luck! The dean of the school I work for asked if I'd like to pick crabapples at her house. Funny thing is I had no idea what a crabapple was - I imagined a small, perhaps flattened, crab-shaped apple?! No dice - the things were about the size of a grape. OMG, this would be a labor of pure food love trying to make anything out of these. About 99.9% of the recipes online were either crabapple juice, jelly or butter - boring!

If there were two recipes that dominated this summer's cooking, it has been the bread pudding (which you all know about) and the mojito. First to the mojito...the CSA has been sending lots of melons this summer - honeydews and cantaloupes - which aren't exactly our favorite fruits. Challenged and determined to find a good use, I found a melon mojito recipe, not made with Midori, but rather with fresh honeydew juice. One 6 lb melon made 8 lovely drinks that lasted us about 2 hours. Two weeks later a cantaloupe came and 8 more lovely melon mojitos.

One Sunday we ran out of wine and in desperation and laziness I thawed some pureed plum juice I made from the plums of the house we moved from in June. 8 more lovely PLUM mojitos.

So it seems like my mojito recipe was suited to any fruit, but what about super sour, rock hard crabapples. Let's give it a try! As I mentioned, it is a bit of a labor of love, but whip up a batch now at the tail end of summer and you'll be whisked away as if "on a tropical cruise to paradise!"

Crabpple Mojito

Servings: 4 (I was scared to ruin a whole cup of rum if this failed so I only started with half. Double at your own peril.)

Time: 30 min active; 90 min total

Type: vegan

Price: ~$6.00 total; $1.50 per drink

Nutrition: (um, no.)

1 lb. rinsed, stemmed crabapples

3 1/4 cup water, divided

1/4 cup sugar

5 large sprigs mint

2 limes, juiced

1/3-1/2 cup golden rum

1. Puree crabapples until finely minced. Put in sauce pan with 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil and the simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.

2. Strain crabapples in a fine sieve over a larger boil and refrigerate juice.

3. Meanwhile, put remaining 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup sugar in a small pot and heat until sugar is dissolved. Do not boil. Turn off the heat and put in mint. Let steep for 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, juice limes.

5. Put crabapple juice, sugar syrup (with mint), rum and lime juice in a pitcher and refrigerate at least 30 minutes or as much as overnight.

6. Serve over ice cubes and add a fresh mint sprig.