Smyth County, Virginia, located in the mountains of southwest Virginia, offering outdoor adventures and small town charm.

Details online at VisitSmythCountyVA.com.

[uplifting music] [Chef Missy] Cooking can be lonely.

You're up with the sun.

It's just the food and your thoughts.

You're thinking, planning, creating, and doing, all at the same time.

I make a lot of decisions when I'm cooking, but I prefer to make memories.

And my favorite cooking memories are days spent with that special friend.

Someone who is in your heart and brightens your day.

Good friends are like apples.

Thousands of varieties carrying many different colored skins, crunchy layers of sweet and tart, and heart-healthy.

Although apples have been domesticated for close to 10,000 years, the first apple orchard in America was planted in what's now Boston by Reverend William Blackstone in 1625.

Deciduous by birth, the apple tree goes dormant for winter.

Flowering blossoms are produced in the spring, which fade from bloom to fruit in mid to late summer or autumn, when they're ready to harvest.

Gathering apples reminds me of gathering friends.

Friends are the family we choose, and we fill our friend basket, one by one, along our journey.

Some friendships last a lifetime because we preserve them with butter and sugar.

But my favorite friendships are the ones we didn't see coming.

Their familiarity, humor, and authenticity catch you by surprise.

Your conversations pick right back up from where you left them.

The beat of the friendship is warm, and the character of its love is both savory and sweet.

Apples and friendship-- there is no better way to fill your day.

Hi, I'm Chef Missy and I'm the French Magnolia, a true-blue southern gal with French ancestry running through my veins.

My husband, Thomas, is a wine expert and hospitality veteran.

Throughout our careers, we've worked for some incredible restaurants and hotels from Atlanta to New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, to the edge of a mountain at a five-star Relais & Chateaux.

But pretty soon, the French Magnolia, a luxury movable feast company, was born.

We pour into your home and set an elaborate stage for a multi-course culinary and wine experience.

We settled in Bristol, Virginia, a good place to live.

And when we're not working, we love connecting with local farms and Appalachian culture.

From farm, field, garden, and stream to Chef and Somm to the table, all in one day.

This is the French Magnolia Cooks.

An early autumn day brings us to Wytheville in Southwest Virginia.

For over 80 years, the Williams family has owned and operated a 600-acre farm with corn and dairy to peaches and blackstrap molasses.

But they also grow a whole lot of apples, 16 varieties, to be exact.

Today, we're meeting up with Bobby Williams, the third generation to own and operate the Williams Farm.

And we're going to learn all about apples.

-Morning.

-Good morning.

Okay, Bobby, thank you so much for letting us be here.

This is just gorgeous.

It's so exciting.

I love apples.

Tell me a little bit about the history and provenance of Williams Orchards, and how you and your wife and children came to own this farm.

[Bobby Williams] Well, my grandfather started everything, years and years ago.

My grandfather started planting apples in the '20s and progressed until he had probably 75 or 80 acres of apples.

He was the person that started everything.

And then, my dad was really interested.

After Granddaddy died, Dad took over and managed the orchard.

He passed away in '99, so that year, I got into the fruit business.

-Bobby, how many acres do you have here?

[Bobby Williams] Well, our total farm is 600 acres.

We have about 12 acres of apples.

We raise about 16 different varieties of apples.

They mature at different times.

Right now, here in August, the Summer Rambo is our main apple that we have.

And then, we move into other varieties as they mature.

[Chef Missy] Okay, Bobby, what's your favorite apple?

[Bobby Williams] The Golden Delicious is probably one of the best all-around apples there is.

This is a Gala apple.

It's mainly an eating apple.

And it's real crunchy, and it just has a real good, sweet flavor to it.

This is the Virginia Beauty, an old heirloom variety.

These trees are about 25, 27 years old.

-[Chef Missy] Wow, really?

-[Bobby] Yeah.

-Tell me about the Rambos.

-Well, the Rambo is mainly an applesauce, apple butter type apple.

When they get ripe, they really have a pretty decent kind of flavor.

[Chef Missy] Can we cut one and taste it?

[Bobby Williams] Yeah, sure can.

-Thank you.

-See, it'll be a little tart.

-Mm!

-But it's also getting some sugar in it.

-Mm.

Wow!

Wow, it's the perfect combination of tart and sweet.

So, what's the best way to pick an apple?

-Just grab a hold of it and run, like a thief.

-[Chef Missy laughs] I spent the day with Bobby, learning as much as I could about growing apples.

Bobby is a man of few words, but an encyclopedia of knowledge.

I am so grateful for farmers.

[♪♪♪♪♪] -Thank you, Bobby.

-Yes, sir.

-We had a good time.

I learned a lot.

-Yeah, great.

I'm glad you could come out today.

-Yeah, we are, too.

-Glad y'all could come.

[Chef Missy] Aww!

Thank you so much for letting us tread here on your beautiful land.

Okay, we are back here in the French Magnolia Culinary Center.

And today, we are going to make apple galettes.

And we are also so blessed to have our amazing sous-chef, Amanda, with us in the house.

I have had so much fun with you today.

-Yeah, it's really been a great day.

-Yeah, just a blast.

I love just catching up with you again, and cooking with you again.

The first thing we need to do is make apple galette dough.

Now this is easier than you think it is.

I know, for me personally, I have always been so intimidated by making bread dough and pie crusts.

But this recipe is easy.

The first thing we're going to do is my favorite.

We're going to do 12 tablespoons each of cold, cold, cold, really good, high-quality butter.

Look at you.

She always does it perfect.

Okay, now we've got to work quickly, right?

So, we need a cup and a half of flour each.

I use King Arthur, non-GMO flour.

It is awesome.

Unbleached, I'm sure most of you know all about King Arthur.

But it really is the best.

Teaspoon of salt?

And what did I say?

[Amanda] Tablespoon of sugar.

[Chef Missy] Tablespoon of sugar.

Smarty-pants.

Always has the answer.

Now we need a quarter cup of very cold water.

The water is what helps create the gluten.

What's fun about this is that you can also use vodka.

What?

Vodka?

So, vodka is, it's still wet, right, and it's clear.

And it gets the job done, but it doesn't create as much gluten.

Just a little kitchen tip.

And I actually just go ahead and use my fingers, kind of mix it together a little bit.

The best tool for making dough is clean hands.

I like getting a little crumble going.

Okay, add all the butter.

Look at you, Miss Perfect over here.

We have our butter, flour, and salt.

And right now, what we're doing is we're working quickly.

I take each piece of butter and just start kind of mashing the flour into the butter.

If you guys haven't noticed, I love butter.

When in doubt, add butter.

-It makes everything better.

-It does.

Life is so much better with butter.

So today, we're going to make two apple galettes, a savory apple galette and a sweet apple galette.

I'm thinking a Waldorf galette with blue cheese, apples, and walnuts.

For the sweet, we're going to do a classic.

Apples, ginger, maybe finish à la mode with some French vanilla ice cream.

Why not pie for lunch and then pie for dessert as well?

-Why not?

-Let's just eat pie.

Why aren't we just eating pie every day?

I think it's so much fun to bake with a friend.

[Amanda] Oh, yeah.

[Chef Missy] It's a fall, crisp, September afternoon.

Southwest Virginia is so beautiful.

-Yes.

[Chef Missy] It makes you feel like you really need Number 2 sharpened pencils, like a school box.

We are going to wrap these dough balls in some Saran wrap, nice and tight.

All the air out.

Get them in the refrigerator.

Minimum of two hours, but if you can do four, even better.

And then, if you can do it overnight, even better.

Okay, for our savory galette, here's what I'm thinking.

A Waldorf galette.

And that's going to be with apples and blue cheese and walnuts and our homemade dough that we made this morning.

I think it's going to be beautiful.

Aren't you glad we got these apples prepped out earlier today?

-[Amanda] For sure.

-Okay.

The first thing we want to do is, like always, mise en place .

Everything in its place.

Blue cheese and walnuts and apples are just flavors that deserve to go together.

Let's cut these three ways.

And they've been sitting in the refrigerator in a little lemon juice and water.

That looks great.

You've done this a time or two, haven't you?

-Yes.

-So how is Belle doing?

-She's doing great.

-Oh, she is so, so sweet.

She's two now, right?

-Yes.

-Aww!

-And learning every day.

-Precious angel.

And I hear she's a very good eater.

-Oh, yes.

She has quite the palate.

-That's awesome.

That's so good.

That means she'll grow up to not be neurotic.

-Right.

-I didn't think anybody could be faster than me in the kitchen, but this one is pretty darn fast.

These apples are Granny Smith apples.

They're tart and they're great for baking.

I chose these because I feel like that the tart apple is the best in balance with the blue cheese and the walnut.

We're going to do a tablespoon of cornstarch in each.

[Amanda] Okay.

[Chef Missy] So, we're doing the zest of a whole lemon, and the juice of a whole lemon.

It's important when zesting to not do it too deep, right, to be constantly turning it and not get too much on the white.

It gets a little bitter.

The smell of lemon makes me very, very happy.

I will say that.

I love lemon everything.

Give it a little toss.

We're going to do a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of cracked pepper.

Just stir in the salt and pepper, a half a cup of chopped walnuts, and a half a cup of blue cheese.

And then, just give it a good toss.

We're going to put some more blue cheese on top, so don't panic because I know many of you are saying, "That is just not enough cheese."

Perfect.

Let's stick this in the fridge and pull out our dough.

I'm excited.

Okay.

So, this dough has been in the refrigerator for about six hours.

Get some flour going on the board.

Just give it a good mash, mash, mash.

This dough is going to seem very difficult to work with at the beginning when you first pull it, but it's amazing how quickly it warms up.

Give it a flip.

The great thing about galette is that this dough doesn't have to have a perfect edge around the outside.

It's rustic and fun and very Frenchy and very unpretentious.

Wow, yours looks really good.

I'm suddenly feeling very competitive, and that is not in my nature.

I'm actually not a very competitive person at all, maybe competitive with myself.

-There you go.

-Yeah, but not really with other people.

Mine's more a continent.

Just keep working it and have fun.

Mine is, once again, still looking like a continent, but now just a larger continent.

I'm going to put my goody here in the middle.

I'm going to fold mine in, maybe clean up around the edges, and just stick with it.

So, this was three apples.

Depending on the size of the apples, really want to end up with about a cup and a half of filling.

I'm going to just give myself a little perimeter like this.

I'm going to hold back this dough.

We'll use it later.

And I've got a little bit of a crevice happening here, so I'm just going to mash some dough in here, right, easy fix.

So never want to get discouraged and throw in the towel.

Just keep working with it.

It helps to get the sharp edge of a knife underneath to just get yourself started.

Folding like an envelope, over, then over again.

Beautiful.

Now I like just a little kind of peekaboo.

It doesn't need to look perfect.

Okay, for the egg wash, two eggs, two tablespoons of heavy cream, and just whisk it together.

Give it a nice shine.

And then, I'm going to finish with some raw sugar sprinkles.

Gorgeous.

What's the final touch that we need to do to make these Waldorf galettes absolutely perfect?

-More cheese?

[Chef Missy] More cheese!

Bring on the cheese.

400 degrees for 40 minutes.

All right, see you on the other side.

Boom.

I had to say it.

I'm sorry.

Okay, we are back here in the French Magnolia Culinary Center with the sweet apple galette.

Go ahead and put three apples in your bowl.

And they've been sitting in the refrigerator in lemon juice.

And that keeps them from getting brown and keeps them fresh.

So, we're doing the zest of a whole lemon and the juice of a whole lemon.

Give it a little toss.

Okay, quarter cup brown sugar, one tablespoon of fresh ground cinnamon, one tablespoon of freshly ground ginger, one tablespoon of cornstarch, and a teaspoon, right, of salt.

And then, just mix it all up.

I am having so much fun.

Woohoo!

Savory galettes!

Yay!

Let's let them cool, and then we'll have them with a glass of wine.

All right, back to the sweet.

We are going to build it to look kind of pretty but still rustic and unpretentious.

I'm going to leave about two inches on the outside for this one.

I'm going to do small folds this time.

With your basting brush, brush.

And then, let's sprinkle some sugar on the dough.

Awesome.

Beautiful.

What is the one thing that would make these apple galettes absolutely perfect?

-More butter?

[laughter] [Chef Missy] Yes!

Go to the head of the class.

More butter.

All right, these are going to cook, again, on 400 for 40 minutes.

See you're on the other side.

We'll cut into mine and save yours for looking pretty.

Okay.

Ooh, look how beautiful this is.

-[Thomas] Gorgeous.

-[Amanda] Gorgeous.

-Okay, tell us what we've got.

-These are pretty commonly found Rieslings on wine lists throughout the United States.

Here's a dry and a sweet.

Here's a dry and a sweet.

And here's a dry and a sweet.

-This is fun.

-Yeah, so Riesling is the grape, and it's on a steep hillside.

So, it's a lot of runoff, a lot of slate, so you get a lot of mineral.

It gives a lot of acid, and a lot of character in this wine.

They're very inexpensive.

They're very easy to find.

So, I brought Riesling for this, specifically.

It's just the perfect pairing for blue cheese and apple.

-Gosh!

-I don't normally go for a sweet.

And that's not really truly sweet.

-It's more apple.

Bon appétit .

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-Isn't that great?

You guys did such a good job with these.

-Mmm.

And as you get into the bite... there's a lot of cracked pepper.

-Mm-mm.

I get that.

Blue cheese with apples.

It's delicious.

-But the thing about this is that it's not sweet in the way you would think of as a sweet wine.

It's more-- has that apple undertone.

Like it was born to go with the Waldorf galette.

-It's not about, hey, we're going drinking.

It's about, we're having wine with dinner because it elevates the experience.

-Wow.

-I also brought a sweet one, a Sauternes.

-Oh.

-And this one is French.

It's from Bordeaux.

But I think that's going to go better with the dessert pastry.

-Ooh.

Our sweet galettes are done.

Yay!

As it cools, let me look at what is going to set in there.

I'm very, very pleased with this.

[Amanda] We did awesome.

-This is Sauternes.

Sauternes is a place in Bordeaux.

It's from a-- basically a fungus.

And it's called noble rot.

Not a great name.

-Noble rot?

-Not a great name except for the noble part.

-Okay.

-So, it's a naturally occurring fungus that hits the vines on an annual basis in this area.

And what it does, it causes the grapes to shrivel.

Rather than using heat or cold to shrivel the grape, it uses that, the fungus.

-It's like a raisin.

-It becomes raisin-like.

And what it does is, liquid is released or used.

And then, the sugar is left behind.

So, it becomes more intense.

Now the average vine is 50 years old.

So, it means it's really deep into the soil.

So again, we're getting that complexity.

-Here's to the winemakers.

[glasses clinking] And the bakers.

-Yeah.

[♪♪♪♪♪] -Also, more savory than I thought.

-Hm, mm-mm.

Ginger.

[Amanda] Which makes it so savory.

-When you have the galette with the Sauternes, absolutely stunning.

This has been the most perfect day ever.

Love you.

-Love you.

-We did it.

[laughter] We did it, baby.

[glasses clinking] It's a great day.

-I think it was a success.

-Do you remember... the first time we met?

-It was a long time ago.

-At your parents' house.

Thanksgiving.

-Thanksgiving, yeah.

-Yeah.

Thanksgiving Day.

-Yeah.

-Thanksgiving Day.

And our house had just caught on fire.

-Right.

I remember.

I remember.

-Oh, my gosh.

And we had gone out with your parents like one time.

-Hm-mm.

-And your mother's was the only person whose phone number was in my phone in West Jefferson.

Oh, my gosh.

It was like 9:30 at night.

I was like, "Um, Jessica, this is Missy.

Remember me?

We met once.

Um, I kind of need some help, like right away."

-I didn't even know they had left the house.

Like, seriously, when I met you on Thanksgiving, I was like, who are these people and why are they here?

Like, what's going on?

And Mom was like, do you remember?

And I'm like, that never happened.

Like, I was asleep.

-Exactly!

Gosh, isn't it nice to just sit like this at the end of a long day?

-Yeah.

The work is done.

It's time to relax.

-Exactly.

I love it.

I think we're kind of galette queens.

-Yeah.

[laughter] [♪♪♪♪♪] [Chef Missy] A good friendship is like a galette, well-built, light and airy, filled with seasonal fruit, balanced, sometimes rustic, but substantial, unpretentious, and can determine your future.

Friendships form lasting memories, and the DNA of those memories forge heart pathways.

A good friend loves at all times... encourages and lifts our spirits.

So maybe it's "a friend a day keeps the doctor away."

Cherish the friends you have, but with each season, make a new one.

Who knows?

Maybe they will be the apple of your eye.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [music fades out] Smyth County, Virginia, offering a business friendly environment with partnerships like Smyth Strong fostering entrepreneurship and growth.

Details at SmythCountyEconomicDevelopment.c om.