Tatin For Now
The perfect Maya Even presents the perfect dessert and her recipe for it
The apple is a remarkable fruit. Consider its singular status in any national pecking order of popular desserts: apple strudel, apple crumble, apple pie – puddings that seem to embody all that is good, wholesome and somehow reassuring about their respective countries. The pastries are the national costumes but the apple is the shared heart. The apple is what unites us. The French also love this fruit. But the French, being French, resist simplification. Turn to the dessert chapters of any of the classic French cookbooks and you will find at least 25 apple puddings, half a dozen of which can claim a place in a gastronomic hall of fame. There are flans and soufflés, tarts and cakes, charlottes, crêpes, clafoutis… It all somehow makes the culinary improvisation of the demoiselles Tatin just over a century ago even more of a miracle. If you consider that the skills of two modest provincial sisters could triumph over several hundred years of cooking virtuosity – over Escoffier, Vatel, Carême, Dunand – to produce a dessert that has become one of, if not the representative of all that is good and luscious and French about patisserie, what else is it but miraculous? Or perhaps not. Perhaps, like genetics, those hundreds of years of French culinary evolution were necessary before they could culminate in the creation of a dessert as perfect as Tarte Tatin. Whatever the explanation, Tatin is it.
A word about equipment. This recipe is so famous that it has its own pan. Not many individual recipes do. The Tatin pan is round, copper and comes in a number of sizes (most typically a diameter of about 20cm with sides 5cm high). If you do not have this, you can unscrew the handle of a similarly sized round cast-iron pan or heavy skillet. If it does not unscrew and looks wooden or flimsy, wrap the handle well in some tin foil just before it goes in the oven, checking first that the whole thing fits.
EQUIPMENT
Tarte Tatin pan or equivalent, baking or greaseproof paper, paring knife, spatula, rolling pin.
INGREDIENTS
200g unsalted cold butter, diced into little cubes, 125g unsalted butter (room temperature), 125g caster sugar, 8-9 small Granny Smith apples, 225g plain flour, pinch of salt, 3 tbsp caster sugar, 1 large egg.
METHOD
Start by making the pastry. This will be a sweet pâte brisée. There are chefs who insist on pâte feuilleté. This is bad advice that will lead you down a ruinous road to soggy pastry and disaster. Believe me, you don’t want to go there. So, on a large piece of baking paper, make a mound with the flour, salt and sugar, and mix it up with your fingers. Add the 200g of diced, cold butter. With an ordinary eating knife, chop the butter into the flour till the mix looks like rough crumbs. You can do this with your fingertips too, but keep the pressure light, the movement brisk and the time to a minimum. Refrigerate the crumbs for a few minutes if they start to get oily and warm. Dig a shallow hole in the middle of your crumbly mix and break the egg into this. Gather the crumbs over the egg and bring the mix together, kneading lightly and quickly till you have a relatively smooth dough. Again, try to keep handling and time to a minimum. Wrap the dough in a piece of clingfilm and refrigerate while you prepare the apples.
The choice of apples in this recipe is important. They have to hold their shape through some fairly fierce cooking and many apples simply collapse, leaving you with apple sauce. Granny Smiths are up to the job, so are hard Cox’s. Stick to these. The others will let you down. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F. Peel the apples. Cut each in half and dig out the core. Leave the apple shape as intact as possible. Smear the bottom of the pan with 100g of the soft butter. Sprinkle over 75g of sugar. Arrange the apple halves on top of this so that they are sitting on their ends upright, the rounded side of each half snuggling against the cored part of its neighbour. Form a tight outer circle in the pan, and then an inner one. The pan should be tightly packed. Sprinkle over the remaining sugar and dot the rest of the butter on top. Place the pan on a stove over high heat for about 20 minutes, moving the pan around to ensure that the sugar under the apples is caramelising to a medium brown colour. Turn off the heat. Ensure the apples are not sticking to the bottom by wiggling a spatula under each one gently.
Take the dough out of the fridge and, on a lightly floured piece of baking paper, roll it out quickly to a diameter a bit larger than your pan. The French like their dough thin; I prefer it a bit thicker. Set the pan of apples close to the dough, carefully lift the paper and dough and quickly flip the whole lot, dough side down, onto the pan of apples. This takes quite steady nerves, but it is easier than any other method I’ve tried. Peel off the paper. Take your rolling pin and roll it across the top of the pan. The dough will settle into the pan to form a blanket on the apples. It should cover them completely – use extra scraps of dough to achieve this, if necessary. Bake in the oven for approximately 35 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Remove from oven. If you have made this several hours in advance, then you can wait to invert till an hour before you are sitting down, first reheating for a couple of minutes over hot stove heat, and then, after waiting five minutes, loosening the edges and covering with a large serving plate. Invert quickly but carefully with a towel to protect you from burns. Tap the bottom of the pan to release the Tarte, lift and then rearrange any apples that may be stuck to the bottom.
Serve warm with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream.
- Maya Even is FQR’s gastronome
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