French pie "Tart Tatin" with apples: recipe

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

There are many recipes for dishes that appeared "accidentally" or "by mistake of the cook." These include tarte Tatin with apples. This delicious French pastry is not only a pleasure to eat. Its history is also very interesting. We will also talk about how a new type of charlotte appeared due to a happy oversight of the cook. But now we encourage you to follow our lead and make your own delicious French dessert. Stop! Now it would not be entirely correct to call it that, because over the hundred years of its existence, tart has acquired numerous variations. Today it is cooked with onions and ham, tomatoes, eggplant and other vegetables. As well as fruits - pears, peaches, plums.

The story of the Taten sisters

A hundred leagues from Paris there is a small town called Lamothe-Bevron. No one remembers exactly when the Tatin family opened a guest yard in its suburb of Sologne, where you could get not only an overnight stay, but also eat on the road. However, it is known for certain that in 1888 this motel was run by two sisters. Caroline Taten was in charge of the guest rooms, and her sister Stephanie was in charge of the restaurant. The famous tart appeared a decade later, in 1898, at the height of the hunting season. The restaurant was full of customers, and in her haste Stephanie, out of breath, forgot to put the dough in the bottom of the baking dish. The apples caramelized well in the oven. Realizing her mistake, Stephanie covered the fruit with dough, sent the pie to the oven, and later flipped it over. The visitors of the restaurant liked the non-traditional upside-down cake so much that the cook deliberately decided to repeat the mistake. The culinary masterpiece received the name of its author. Its fame has crossed national boundaries, and we know it under the name of the French pie "Tarte Tatin" (tarte Tatin).

"The only attraction" of Lamotte-Beuvron

Stephanie's invention didn't last long as a local secret. The hotel served travelers traveling to the capital and back, so many tourists tasted and appreciated the apple "pie in reverse" - tart Tatin. Soon the Parisian restaurateur Louis Vodable heard about him. He was inflamed with the desire to get the recipe for tart by all means. But Stephanie Taten was adamant. Then he went on a trick. The chef of the restaurant "Maxim", owned by Vodabl, hired the girls of Tatin as gardeners. He spied Stephanie making her famous pie and later replicated it in his own kitchen. Tarte Tatin with apples is still on the Maxima menu. But the glory of the town of Lamotte-Beuvron did not fade from this, butonly grew more and more. Metropolitan gourmets were not afraid to go a long way to enjoy tarte des demoiselles Tatin - "tart of two young ladies Tatin". Now members of the Brotherhood of Admirers of this masterpiece are in charge of the restored building. Until now, as a museum exhibit, visitors are shown a wood-burning stove with a blue tile finish, in which the first copy of the tart was baked. To attract tourists, local chefs perform real miracles. This is how the largest tart Tatin with apples in history appeared, the diameter of which was two and a half meters. How the cooks turned this creation over remained a mystery.

Tart ingredients

This classic apple pie is baked with an unusual pastry. It seems to be puff, although making it is much easier. But the main highlight of the dessert was not the airy and light dough, but the filling. Therefore, the main attention should be paid to caramel and apples. The first is very capricious, it can burn in a second. Apples are even worse. You never know how they will behave in the oven. They give too much juice - it will wet the dough, the dessert will look like porridge. Too dry won't work either. Sour? Oh no! If you want to bake a classic tarte Tatin with apples, the recipe calls for Ranet apples. But many cooks have nothing against other varieties. The main thing is that they are with dense pulp and sweet. Suitable "Gala Royal", "Golden" and even our "Antonovka". As for caramel, for its manufacture it is necessary to takereal butter, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla.

Tarte Tatin: puff pastry

Peeled apples are known to quickly blacken in the air. Therefore, we begin to prepare our pie with dough kneading. The classic recipe involves an exclusively puff base and no other. Of course, apples with a biscuit are also very tasty. And using ready-made puff pastry will be quite simple. But this will be a slightly different dish, and not the famous French tart Tatin. For the test, we need 150 grams of butter. It should be very cold, so you need to put the indicated amount in the freezer for a couple of minutes. Sift two hundred and fifty grams of flour on the table through a sieve. Add a teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of s alt there, mix. We take out the oil and quickly, until it is heated, cut into small cubes. Start mixing it with flour with your fingers. You should get a mass of small crumbs. Add an egg yolk and one or two tablespoons of ice water. Knead the dough until smooth. We roll up the bun, wrap it in cling film and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour. But, in all honesty, dessert will not lose anything if you use a layer of ready-made puff pastry.

Cooking caramel

In order to bake apple tart tatin, you need to have a frying pan that can be put in the oven. It is also desirable that it be with a non-stick coating. Caramel should be slightly bitter, so it is important not to miss the moment. We take about a kilogram of apples. For an aesthetic lookcake, it is desirable that they be the same size. We clean the apples, remove the core and cut into slices. To keep the flesh from turning brown, sprinkle the fruit with lemon juice. We put a dry frying pan on a strong fire. Pour in five tablespoons of sugar. When it blooms and starts to blow bubbles, add 120 grams of butter, vanilla and cinnamon (a quarter of a teaspoon). Stir thoroughly so that the caramel does not burn. It is necessary to remove from the stove when the mass becomes pale brown, and the air smells of burnt sugar. To stop the heat treatment process, cooks advise placing the pan on a towel soaked in cold water.

Another caramel recipe

You can do it easier. First, melt the butter and add the indicated amount of sugar, cinnamon and vanillin. This will protect your pan from the possible burning of caramel. Cook, stirring, for about five minutes over medium heat, until the mixture is a nice golden brown. There is a very simple recipe where caramelization takes place already in the oven. We take a baking dish, thickly spread it with oil, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and vanilla, spread the apples, cover with a layer of dough. We send the baking sheet to the oven, and turn the finished product over. But it will no longer be Tarte Tatin with apples. The recipe for a classic dish does not allow any deviations from the canon: caramelization of apples must take place on the stove.

Laying the cake

Go to the nextstage. Now we have a difficult process of caramelization of apples. Remove the pan from the heat and lay out the fruit slices in a circle so that they create the appearance of “scales”. Put the pan back on low heat and sprinkle the apples with a little sugar and cinnamon. Fruit should release juice, which will thin the caramel a little. The liquid should cover the apples so that they soak in the syrup. So we cook, of course, without stirring, so as not to disturb the pattern, for a quarter of an hour. Turn off the fire on the stove and turn on the oven. Apple tart Tatin will be baked at 220 degrees.

Cooking upside down pie

When the fruit in caramel has cooled down a bit, sprinkle the work surface with flour and roll out the dough. It shouldn't be very much. We give the layer a size slightly larger than that of the baking dish. We cover the apples with dough. We turn the protruding edges inward. Poke a few holes with a fork to keep the dough from bubbling in the oven. Bake tart tatin with apples for about forty minutes. Hot turn the cake onto a plate.

Feed

Serve the shifter with taste too. The classic of the genre prescribes to eat it hot to the accompaniment of cider or light red wine. Under no circumstances should tart tatin with apples be heated in the microwave - this will adversely affect the taste. It is better to just put it in the oven for ten minutes on low heat. Or follow the example of the French. Pour 125 milliliters of calvados into a small jug, heat it a little over the fire,then set fire to it and pour it over the cake. The Tatin sisters served their tart with warm sweet sour cream. Parisian restaurants have moved away from this provincial fashion. It is not uncommon to find a tart flanked by whipped cream or even, following the example of the Viennese apple strudel, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Sometimes it is flambéed not with Calvados, but with other strong alcohol. But how to serve the famous tart and what to drink is up to you.