The trouble with tarts, as everyone knows, is soggy bottoms.
This is where tarte Tatin comes in. It’s an upside-down tart, which means the
pastry, though it ends up on the bottom, is cooked on the top. Now just to be
clear, something with the pastry on the top is usually, though not always a pie (and bear in mind that a pie can
also have pastry on the bottom). Anything that’s called a tart will always have the crust at the bottom. So a tarte Tatin is
cooked like a pie, with the pastry on top, but because you tip it up the other
way to serve it, with the filling on top and the pastry at the bottom, it earns
the name tart. Though actually, come
to think of it this distinction is absolutely superfluous, because it’s a
French dish and there’s only one word in French – tarte – which is used for
both pie and tart.
So the story goes that tarte Tatin was invented in a hotel
in France run by the Tatin sisters, possibly by mistake. The original version
has apples fried gently with sugar to form a caramel. Then the pastry is put on
top and the pan put in the oven to bake. Once cooked, it’s flipped over onto a
serving dish and hey presto, succulent, caramelly apple tart.
The first time I came across a variation to this was in one
of Delia Smith’s books. The apples were replaced with red onions, the caramel
had added balsamic vinegar and thyme. I think the pastry was slightly
wholemeal, perhaps with some cheese in it, and when you turned it out you
topped it with curls of parmesan. Utterly yummy and it soon became a standard
recipe for us. Then I started to notice variations on this theme all over the
place – some of them with ready-rolled pastry which was a definite plus!
I suppose there are lots of possible ways to make different
versions of this tart, but I’ve not come across any that struck me as
particularly interesting. Not until last week. I was huffing my way through Yottam
Ottolenghi’s Plenty – this is too
complicated, that’s got stuff I can’t get hold of – when my eye caught on the
word ‘Tatin’. ‘Surprise Tatin’ in fact. A Tatin is always supposedly a
surprise, since the filling is on the bottom, so I wasn’t expecting anything
new. But this was new. Cherry tomatoes. New potatoes. Cheese. Ready-rolled puff
pastry. Hmm. Interesting.
So we tried it. I do think the method is a little more
complicated than it needs to be but having made it once, I can see how to make
it simpler the next time. But there will so
be a next time. I can’t tell you how good this was: the sweet, sour of the
tomatoes, the soft waxy new potatoes, melty cheese, crisp pastry. One major
flaw was that it said to make it in a cake tin and as I have only loose bottom
ones I ended up with burnt caramel all over the
bottom of the oven. I realised this was going to happen as I put the tin in the oven which was galling because I couldn’t
at that stage deconstruct the whole thing. Next time I’ll do it in the flat Le
Creuset I usually use for tarte Tatin.
So big brownie points for Ottolenghi. And I will keep my
eyes open for more alternative Tatins.
You can find the complete menu from week thirteen here.
Claire Watts and her family are cooking vegetarian for a year. You can find out why - and why 'cooking vegetarian' doesn't always necessarily mean 'eating vegetarian' here.
Claire Watts writes and edits books for children.
She's currently working on making something beautiful with fairy tales.
Find out about her Snippets project and how you can help on her Patreon page.
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