what dish would be the definitive conceptual antithesis of molecular gastronomy? it must be something that's been cooked for hundreds of years and doesn't involve "air" or "foam" (and check out this short comic strip...)
I do get really excited about new and intriguing cooking ideas, like chocolate "soil"- I read about this and decided I would race home from work and make it. and then promptly forgot. but history, friends, history...
the classics need to be cooked. they need to be cooked so those recipes continue on their memetic journey through time and civilisations, replicating and evolving into, um, another dessert. yeah. ok that's my recipe-as-meme theory. I'm not yet sure of tarte Tatin's status as a meme, but I'm onto something here. recipes are history and culture, lives and places and stories.
and memes. food transmits cultural ideas. the first person who cautioned against against eating shellfish and pork planted a cultural meme in other minds that has replicated into one of the most successful memes in history (and ensured more scallops and suckling pig for me, bless them).
so eschewing any experiments in molecular gastronomy for a moment, I made a tarte Tatin. actually, I just had some apples to use up. I'd been thinking about it for a while since seeing this version on Stonesoup, because I love puff pastry (who doesn't?), but good sense took hold and I made it the traditional (and less fattening) way. it's butter, apples, and caramelising sugars in an appropriately artless pastry. sort of pretty and ugly at the same time, and definitely not cleverly molecular.
but first, a bit about the tarte Tatin story... apparently first made in 1889 by the Tatin sisters at their hotel in Lamotte-Beuvron in north-central France.some of the mythology suggests that the cook accidentally constructed the pastry and filling upside down (?). others suggest that the apples cooked for a regular apple pie started caramelising when the cook forgot about them in the oven, so a pastry lid was hastily thrown on and the tart was turned upside down and served with the fruit on top to appreciative diners.
then... the guy who started Maxim's in 1893 stopped by the Tatin's hotel, tried their tart and it's been served at Maxim's ever since. given that Maxim's is now owned by the designer Pierre Cardin, I'm wondering whether the tart has taken on some innovative features (I'm thinking of my mum's wardrobe circa 1982 and I am frightened for the tart). if anyone has eaten tarte Tatin at any of the Maxim's restaurants across the globe, please describe it to me, I'm intrigued.
oh, my disclaimer, as you can see I was not true to history, those are big Golden raisins from California which I first soaked in sherry. they're quite the sweetest dried grapes I've ever tasted.
tarte Tatin
makes a 19cm tart (use a non-metallic baking dish).
preheat the oven to 200°c
filling:
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and cut into roughly 6 to 8 wedges
1.5 tablespoons caster sugar
1.5 tablespoons brown sugar
40g butter, melted
half a teaspoon of mixed ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves
1/3 cup raisins (optional)
1/3 cup sherry (optional)
pastry (any rough unsweetened pastry can be used, this recipe has less butter to make it easier to work with):
150g plain flour
60g butter
half a teaspoon of salt
enough cold water to bring the dough together
to make the filling:
mix the raisins and sherry in a bowl, if using.
mix the sugars and spices in a bowl.
pour half the melted butter into a pie dish and sprinkle with some of the sugar mix.
arrange apple pieces tightly in the dish, this will be the top of the tart when served. scatter some raisins and sherry about (the sherry will caramelise too so don't worry about excess liquid).
sprinkle more sugar over and add the remaining apples and raisins, trying to create a relatively flat arrangement. if you have more apples you can make the tart as deep as you like.
sprinkle over remaining sugar and melted butter, then put it in the hot oven while you make the pastry.
to make the pastry:
rub the butter into the flour and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs.
add enough cold water to bring the dough to a stiff but workable texture.
roll the dough out to about 5mm thick and cut a circle big enough to encase the apples. you need to tuck the sides of the pastry down beside the apples so make a guess at the size of your circle and then you can trim it a bit once it's assembled (or make a square one and bugger the geometry...) the pastry will shrink a bit during cooking so err on the side of excess.
remove the apples from the oven when they've begun to colour. go by smell- they should be fragrantly sugary but not deeply toffee-like.
gently use a spoon to pull the apples toward the centre of the dish a little, just to make room for the pastry sides.
lay the pastry on the apples and tuck the sides down (with the back of a spoon if it's still hot). as the pastry warms up you can gently press it into a nice flat tart base. the above pastry recipe is quite robust and safe to poke.
return the tart to the oven and reduce the temperature to 170°c after a few minutes.
bake for about 30-40 minutes, until the liquid bubbling up side has thickened and darkened.
leave for 3-5 minutes so the pastry can harden a little, then invert the tart.
traditionally served warm with vanilla ice cream.
