Apple pie with walnut topping.

The neighbours left a large bag of apples they had harvested in the wicker chair on our front porch one hot day in late summer. A text message said they’d be away for a few days, and we might also collect some cherry tomatoes from their garden before they became overripe. 

I opened their big gate and walked into a kind of eclectic sub-tropical Japanese-style garden in which flowering vines trailed over brick walls, freakishly tall sunflowers towered out of raised garden beds, and hundreds of cherry tomatoes sprawled; their vines winding through and around other plants rather than being lashed to their uprights like crucified lawyers. Amid this psychedelic jungle sat a red-beamed gazebo topped bizarrely but satisfyingly by a Danish maritime flag. The apple tree was somewhere behind all this eclecticism. The place seemed to have its own atmosphere, if not its own climate. 

The neighbours sit out here at night under coloured lights listening to Shankar and watching parti-coloured smoke on the slow-drifting breeze. I pass sometimes with Zoro on a late-night walk and catch a faint redolence. How pleasant to have such old-fashioned neighbours, for whom it will forever be 1967, maybe 1969 at a pinch. 

But now they were gone, probably to Nimbin; and I was in their garden gathering a bucket of precocious red orbs. Later these became the topping for that insanely delicious Italian bread appetiser called bruschetta; with fresh basil, olive oil and flecks of grated pepper and salt on lightly roasted, oiled and garlic-smeared ciabatta. 

Back to the apples: half of them were baked into a pie. The other half were stewed and chilled.

Crumble-crossed apple pie.

I peeled the apples and quartered and chopped them into thin kidney-shaped slices. I combined an egg with a couple of good splashes each of caramel sauce and maple syrup, half a cup of sour cream and a tablespoon of flour. Then I carefully combined the apples with the syrupy mixture. Let's say I introduced the two. In the bowl it looked like five melting Sydney Opera Houses. Then I kind of monster-moved the lot into a greased pie dish over a sheet of Pampas brand shortcrust pastry, folding the square edges over the top, which formed a cross where they didn't meet. Into the cross I added a mixture of brown sugar, crushed walnuts and butter, and put the pie dish in the oven for about 40 minutes.