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Nov. 2nd, 2012 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickTarte tatin. You need apples, flour, sugar, butter, oven, plate-sized cast iron skillet
I used...
6 stayman apples, big ones.
1 1/2 cup flour
2 sticks butter
3/4 cup sugar
my home-defense skillet
Mix 1 stick butter and flour together as for a pie dough. Don't mix as well as the mealy texture of pie dough, but make a rougher mix with pea-sized bits of butter left. Add ice water to make a dough ball as per pie dough. Put in fridge.
Peel and quarter and core apples. Quarters really is small enough. Even if they're big apples. Do not go smaller than quarters.
Preheat oven to 400F
On medium-high heat, in cast iron skillet, melt other stick butter, dump in sugar. Stir with fork to combine, cook a while until some of the water has boiled off and the thing has turned a bit golden. It should be boiling pretty merrily.
Put in apples. Put them one side down (not the inside or outside, the side-side, so that they can spoon together all snuggly in the pan) in a swirly pattern around the skillet if you're feeling artistic. If not feeling artistic do what you will. You should have insufficient skillet for all the apples at the beginning. No worries. The apples shrink a lot as they cook and you will be able to work more in (about one apple's worth) as you go forward. If you have "just enough" when you start, you will have big gaping holes in your coverage as you finish up. For "perfect" coverage at the end, add additional apple wedges as you go on. They will cook up plenty and nobody will know that some apples got less cooking than other apples.
Cook the apples in the boiling butter and sugar mix. You will need to nudge/flip the apples around the pan somewhat so that they don't stick. I flipped mine twice and nudged them around quite a bit. It's OK if the apples get a wee bit browned, but NOT OK if the sauce starts to smoke. Medium-high is a nice place, hot enough to boil off the moisture from the apples and not so hot that the apples scorch. A lower heat gets the apples mushy enough to fall apart because the liquid isn't boiling off fast enough and they have to cook too long. Higher heat scorches the apples and sugar because the apples can't bleed out liquid fast enough to stay ahead of the evaporation.
Your mission with the flipping and nudging and temperature control (seriously, medium-high) is to get the apples mostly drained of moisture and the caramel-to-be reasonably dry so that it can start to caramelize to a warm brown. (It cannot caramelize while there is too much wet in the sauce because the boiling water keeps the temperature to around 212 or whatever and caramelization happens a lot closer to 300 than to 212.)
Once the caramelization is going on and the apples are pretty dry, remove pan from heat and sit on an empty burner. If you want last-minute apple arranging to happen, do it now.
Quickly roll out dough into a pie-crust sort of a thing and plop it on the top of the apples in the skillet. Tuck edges roughly down in around apples. It doesn't have to be pretty, here.
Poke a couple of holes in dough with a knife and then pop into the oven for fifteen or twenty minutes, until dough is cooked and browned.
Remove from oven. Allow to cool down slightly (five minutes?) and then set plate on top of skillet, flip skillet/plate combo over, tap bottom if feeling worried. Remove skillet, leaving tarte in place on plate. Carefully remove any stuck bits from skillet and paste back into proper location on tarte using leftover caramel goop.
Serve still warm (if possible) and maybe with ice cream.
I used...
6 stayman apples, big ones.
1 1/2 cup flour
2 sticks butter
3/4 cup sugar
my home-defense skillet
Mix 1 stick butter and flour together as for a pie dough. Don't mix as well as the mealy texture of pie dough, but make a rougher mix with pea-sized bits of butter left. Add ice water to make a dough ball as per pie dough. Put in fridge.
Peel and quarter and core apples. Quarters really is small enough. Even if they're big apples. Do not go smaller than quarters.
Preheat oven to 400F
On medium-high heat, in cast iron skillet, melt other stick butter, dump in sugar. Stir with fork to combine, cook a while until some of the water has boiled off and the thing has turned a bit golden. It should be boiling pretty merrily.
Put in apples. Put them one side down (not the inside or outside, the side-side, so that they can spoon together all snuggly in the pan) in a swirly pattern around the skillet if you're feeling artistic. If not feeling artistic do what you will. You should have insufficient skillet for all the apples at the beginning. No worries. The apples shrink a lot as they cook and you will be able to work more in (about one apple's worth) as you go forward. If you have "just enough" when you start, you will have big gaping holes in your coverage as you finish up. For "perfect" coverage at the end, add additional apple wedges as you go on. They will cook up plenty and nobody will know that some apples got less cooking than other apples.
Cook the apples in the boiling butter and sugar mix. You will need to nudge/flip the apples around the pan somewhat so that they don't stick. I flipped mine twice and nudged them around quite a bit. It's OK if the apples get a wee bit browned, but NOT OK if the sauce starts to smoke. Medium-high is a nice place, hot enough to boil off the moisture from the apples and not so hot that the apples scorch. A lower heat gets the apples mushy enough to fall apart because the liquid isn't boiling off fast enough and they have to cook too long. Higher heat scorches the apples and sugar because the apples can't bleed out liquid fast enough to stay ahead of the evaporation.
Your mission with the flipping and nudging and temperature control (seriously, medium-high) is to get the apples mostly drained of moisture and the caramel-to-be reasonably dry so that it can start to caramelize to a warm brown. (It cannot caramelize while there is too much wet in the sauce because the boiling water keeps the temperature to around 212 or whatever and caramelization happens a lot closer to 300 than to 212.)
Once the caramelization is going on and the apples are pretty dry, remove pan from heat and sit on an empty burner. If you want last-minute apple arranging to happen, do it now.
Quickly roll out dough into a pie-crust sort of a thing and plop it on the top of the apples in the skillet. Tuck edges roughly down in around apples. It doesn't have to be pretty, here.
Poke a couple of holes in dough with a knife and then pop into the oven for fifteen or twenty minutes, until dough is cooked and browned.
Remove from oven. Allow to cool down slightly (five minutes?) and then set plate on top of skillet, flip skillet/plate combo over, tap bottom if feeling worried. Remove skillet, leaving tarte in place on plate. Carefully remove any stuck bits from skillet and paste back into proper location on tarte using leftover caramel goop.
Serve still warm (if possible) and maybe with ice cream.
