I urge you to try this regardless of whether you are an apple-pie-girl (or boy) - I dare guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Who knows, this tart may even end up as apple of your eye.
To play around, you can also make the same tart using pears. Just make sure they are ripe enough. I don't know about you, but unripe pears remind me of potatoes. Again, this tart is adapted from Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.
You will need:
Pâte sablée:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 tsp salt
42 g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk
Apple sauce:
6 medium sized red apples
1/4 cup water
3 tbsp light brown sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
Topping:
2 medium red apples
2 tbsp thick cream
Preparation:
To make the pâte sablée:
Put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in. Stir the yolk, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses, about 10 seconds each - until the dough, which will look granular after the egg is added in, forms clumps and curds. Turn the dough out onto a work surface, and very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.
Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan (I used two 4-inch pans). Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Don't be too heavy handed - press the crust in so that the edges of the pieces clings to one another, but not so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes before baking.
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 190 deg C. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminium foil and fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust. Bake for 25 minutes. Carefully remove foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. Let cool.
To make the apple sauce:
Peel and core apples. Cut into chunks and toss them into a medium sized heave-bottomed saucepan. Stir in water and brown sugar, cover the pan and put over medium-low heat. Stir the apples from time to time to keep them from scorching, and if the water is boiling away quickly, add more by driblets. When the apples are soft enough to be mashed with a spoon - 15 - 20 minutes - remove the pan from the heat and pass the apples through a food mill, or press them through a strainer, into a bowl.
If the apple sauce seems thin, return the sauce to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, for a few minutes, until the sauce is thick enough to sit up on a spoon. Remove the pan from heat and return sauce to bowl. Taste the sauce, adding more brown sugar if you think it needs it. Press a piece of cling film over the surface of the sauce and refridgerate until no longer warm.
To make the topping:
Peel the apples, cut them in half and remove the cores. Cut each apple half lengthwise in half again and then, still working lengthwise, cut about 7 slices from each of the quarters. The slices will be quite thin. Soak the apple slices in some lightly salted water to prevent browning.
To assemble the tart:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat oven to 200 deg C.
Fill the tart shell almost up to the top of the rim with the apple sauce and put the pan on a baking sheet lined with parchment or silicon mat. Arrange the apple slices in slightly overlapping concentric circles on the apple sauce. Using a pastry brush, paint cream over the sliced apples.
Bake the tart for 50 minutes - it will look as if the apple sauce and apples have risen a bit. The apples should be golden, a little burnt around the edges and soft enough to be pierced with the tip of a knife. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack.
Serve warm with crème fraîche, as how the Normans would serve it with. As we could do without the extra calories, we ate ours straight up and it is just as good.
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