Lucky dip 2 - Tarte Tatin
"Instead of soft clouds of sweetly sour fruit tucked beneath a comforting blanket of biscuity pastry, the tatin brazenly displays its wares, stickily caramelised and decadently buttery, on the outside – the humble base reduced to a mere vehicle for the apples in their sugary finery."
Felicity Cloake
This is the second part of my lucky dip from a few days ago and I'm going to cheat because a few years ago I did a mini cookbook on tarte tatin for my daughters-in-law, one of whom had requested a recipe. So what follows is just an edited version of that. Well the stuff within the quotes. I may add something more current at the end.
"This world famous dish was supposedly invented by the Sisters Tatin (Stéphanie (on the left) and Caroline (on the right) in their hotel in the Loire valley in the town of Lamotte Beuvron, where, no doubt you will be able to feast on numerous versions of the dish. It seems that actually Stéphanie was the cook and Caroline ran the hotel. There are various versions of how it came to be - she put it in upside down, she dropped it, she got fed up with making ordinary apple tarts all day - who knows. She may simply have invented it. There is even an offcial Tarte Tatin website whose version is shown at the top of the page. (well now in 2018 I cannot find it, although the town has quite a lot on it.) The Larousse Gastronomique though dismisses the whole legend and says it is just a speciality of the Sologne region in the Loire valley - which incidentally is very close to where I used to spend my French summers. The Sologne is a forested area where the French kings used to go hunting and we used to go mushrooming.
It’s actually a marginally time-consuming and tricky thing to pull off - so far I
have had mixed results myself, but it is delicious so give it a go.
I looked up all my recipes for this classic dish and found that, of course, there is no one way to do this. There seem to be 3 basic methods - all to do with whether you cook the apples frst or not. There also seems to be dispute about whether you tuck the pastry in or just cut it to ft, but I guess that’s an aesthetic thing more than anything. The kind of pastry used varies a little too and what you cook it in. You do need something that can be used both on a cooktop and in an oven though. Mostly they all use a variation on shortcrust pastry but you can, of course use puff pastry too - just to make it easier. The colour is the only consistent thing! It should be brown."
Here are some different versions:
In some ways it's not a particularly appetising looking thing is it? In some instances it almost looks like a burnt pizza. But it does taste good.
Mind you the queen of style, Donna Hay does manage to make it look really, really tempting. It looks shinier and the unhealthiness of it all is offset by a healthy looking glass of milk.
You can, of course make it with other kinds of fruit - pear is very common and on trend but even saw a mango version.
And then there are the savoury versions. Lots of people have a tomato version and Delia also has a red onion version too. I have made both and been a bit disappointed with the tomato one but the onion one can be pretty OK. I think Belinda Jefferey's tomato cake thing is much tastier. The tomato version has been spotted with the addition of caramelised garlic and I have also seen pumpkin and roast Mediterranean vegetables suggested - you can just run wild with your imagination really.
But back to the small town of Lamotte Beuvron, which is exploiting the tarte tatin to its full extent. And why not? There is a brotherhood with fancy costumes and a coat of arms and no doubt there are festivals and things too. In Trip Advisor I saw one very cutting comment about the quality of the Tarte Tatin served in the hotel:
"la tarte Tatin était une catastrophe indigne de ce lieu ( ou la tarte tatin était découverte par les sœurs du même nom ). La pate molle et sans goût et les pommes de mauvaise qualité coupées en petits morceaux, on dirait qu'elle a était achetée au supermarché du coin et légèrement réchauffée avant d'être servie." Translation - "The Tarte Satin was a catastrophe, unworthy of this place (where the Tarte Tatin was discovered by the sisters of that name. The soft, tasteless pastry and the bad quality apples cut in small pieces, one would have thought were bought at the corner supermarket and lightly reheated just before serving."
Which is a bit depressing is it not? I mean if you are going to make a big thing of something like this then you should at least get it right. But then maybe you don't have to - maybe most customers are only going to come once anyway. I guess it's what gives tourism a bad name. Surely the Brotherhood would complain.
Anyway - there you go - it was Maeve O'Meara's only French recipe in her Food Safari cookbook, so that must say something.
