They go really well together food blogging event (TGRWT) is all about flavour pairing, that is combining ingredients and flavours that wouldn’t usually be put together and seeing how it turns out. Ingredients to pair this time are: Apple & Lavender. For the sixth event (TGRWT #6), hosted by Inge at vanielje kitchen, I present an apple-lavender sorbet with a sensational taste, served with crispy dried slices of apples. To tell you the truth, the sorbet is not blue, rather dusky pink. Blue is my T-shirt beneath the dish.

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Ingredients
for the apple-slices:
2 green apples
250 g white crystal sugar
0.6 L water
200 mg Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) or the juice of a lemon

for the sorbet:
about 350 g green apples (I had only Rubinette with red cheeks)
juice of 2 lemons (approx. 100 ml)
150 g white sugar powder
1 dl water
1 Tablespoon lavender flowers, dried (of my 2007 harvest)

Preparation
for the apple-slices:
(1) boil up sugar and water to a sirup. Just before adding the apple-slices (2) add lemon-juice or ascorbic acid to the sirup.
(2) wash and dry apples, but do not peel. With the aid of a vegetable plane cut uniform 2mm thick slices and put them into the sugar sirup. Let them simmer under gentle heating for at least 45 minutes. Remove the slices with the aid of a skimmer, put them on a baking grid and let them drain.
(3) Put the slices in a pre-heated oven at 80°C for about 1-2 hours. After 1 hour reverse the slices. The finished slices should by crispy and slightly opaque. Cut them in halves with scissors.

for the sorbet:
(4) wash and dry apples, but do not peel. Core and cut each apple in about 2 cm pieces and put them in a small air-tight food-storage container together with the lemon juice. Shake the container so that the apples are protected from darkening. Then put the container in the deep-freezer for about 4 hours.
(5) Boil up sugar and water to a sirup, remove from heat, add the lavender-flowers, stir and let the mixture chill (with covered pan).
(6) Pour the sirup in a mixer, add the contents of the frozen container with the apples and lemon-juice and blend until smooth.
(7) Pour the slurry into the ice-cream maker and freeze-churn.

Discussion
The idea to serve a green apple sorbet with apple-sclices (without lavender) goes back to the french chef Michel Trama in Puymirol France. I have simplified the recipe from Gourmet 55/1990 and added the lavender. Apple and lavender go really very well together. A wonderful old-fashioned, but very pleasant and elegant sorbet. For my taste a little bit to sweet. Next time I will take half of the sugar for the sorbet but replace water by apple juice. btw: the sauce in beneath of the sorbet-ball is sorbet, that I have molten before.