Tarte Tatin

August 21, 2009

Tarte Tatin

As anyone who has ever eaten with me at a restaurant can tell you, I heart apple desserts. I find them glorious, wonderful, autumnal, and something that I long for all year long, but they seem a damned nuisance to make at home. You have to buy pounds of apples which must be peeled, cored, and cut. There’s the crusts which appear finicky, or the crumbles which I can never get to the right crumbly texture.

Luckily, Paul has patience, the ability to follow a recipe, and a “let’s just do it” mentality, which is how I ended up eating a decadent tarte tatin one night, with a little scoop of cinnamon ice cream, and a dab of whipped cream, on the side. I know it’s still summer, but September’s looming large in my mind, and I’m starting to think of apples all the time.

Paul’s added advice was, “Many blogs and food books stress how difficult pastry doughs are and that if you look at them funny, they fall apart or end up being super chewy. That can be true but since pastry crusts are only made of flour, salt, and fat (i.e. butter) it shouldn’t be a huge deal to throw out a failed pastry dough and make another. So long as you don’t overwork the dough you shouldn’t be scared of them and they are delicious.”

Tarte Tatin Recipe

Pastry Dough:

1 1/3 cups of all-purpose flour

1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter (cold)

1 large egg (cold)

Carmelized Apples:

1 more stick of butter (YUM!)

3/4 cup of granulated sugar, plus one more tablespoon

3 lbs of Granny Smith apples, peel them, core them, quarter them.

Instructions:

1. Do the pastry first. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Dice up the first stick of cold butter and put the butter in to the bowl and coat the butter with the dry mixture. Then, use your fingers to squish the butter and incorporate it into the dough. You want it thinly crumbly, not thoroughly melted and mixed in. The original recipe says you can toss all this into a food processor and go at it, but our food processor would cry and then die if we tried that.

2. Then, add the egg and stire with a fork until little balls of dough form. Press the balls together with the back of the fork, and then make them all into a ball which you’ll wrap in plastic and then flatted into a four inch disk. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, but we often forget stuff like this in our household and let it refrigerate for like a few hours. Just make sure it warms slightly so you can roll it out if you forget it for a long period of time.

3. Back from watching some television or reading a book? Unwrap the dough, and turn it out onto a floured surface where you’ll roll it out. Make sure to sprinkle it with some extra flour first, though. Starting from the center of the disk, roll it until you have a 12-inch circle.

4. Move the crust to a rimless cookie sheet or a turned-over a rimmed cookie sheet if that’s all you have, or a convenient pizza peel if you have that. Cover the dough with some plastic wrap, and put it into the fridge while we do the apples.

5. Turn the oven on to 375, and make sure you have an over rack set to the upper-middle.

6. On to the apples. Melt the remaining stick of butter into a nine inch cast iron skillet. Remove from heat and sprinkle the whole of that evenly with sugar. You’ll then want to arrange your quartered apples in the skillet. Our finished picture above should give you some idea of how that should look.

7. Return the skillet to high heat. Cook until the juices turn to a rich amber color. This should take 10 to 12 minutes. Then, remove the skillet from the heat, and use a pair of forks to flip the apples over to their uncaramelized side!

8. Return the skillet to high heat again for another five minutes to cook the other side of the apples.

9. Remove the skillet from the heat once more. Slide the dough over the skillet and tuck the edges of the dough against the skillet wall. Be careful, please. The skillet is super hot.

10. Throw the whole thing into the oven, and cook for 25-30 minutes. Your crust should be golden brown.

11. Put the skillet on a wire rack, let it cool for 20 minutes. Loose the edges with a paring knife, place your serving plate over the top of the skillet and flip! We had a few stuck apple pieces, but not many, and we just re-arranged them on top of the tart.

At this point, if you were smart, you already had a bunch of cinnamon ice cream and some whipped cream ready for topping. If not, Paul will give me the recipe for his cinnamon ice cream another day to post here.