When you're snacking on apples, you expect them to fragment with a loud crunch, the flavors to explode in your mouth, and for the delectable juices to run down your chin. If your local supermarket's ...

Last fall, I picked a wild apple from a tree growing in the Ile-Alatau Mountains of southern Kazakhstan. It was a Malus sieversii, wild ancestor of the cultivated apple. Biting into it, the flavor was ...