As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a Masterchef inspired night. This recipe was in a pressure test challenge where 3 of the worse performing chefs have to follow a recipe, and the chef that served the worst dish goes home immediately.

Whilst this may seem like a simple recipe, you can easily stuff it up. You can easily burn the caramel, you can burn your pastry, you can under cook the pastry….the list goes on.

I followed the recipe, but didn’t have an oven proof frying pan, so I did the first few steps in the frying pan, then transferred everything to an ovenproof dish for baking.
I was happy with the result. Matt Preston would have been happy that my pastry had a nice crunch! I served mine with vanilla ice-cream, the caramel was a little bitter but the apples were rather sweet. So it all balanced out rather well.

Apple Tarte Tatin
Kate Nichols

3 Golden Delicious apples
1 tbs lemon juice
½ cup (110g) caster sugar
20g unsalted butter, chopped
Ready-rolled puff pastry sheet
Cream or ice-cream, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 220ºC (200ºC fan-forced).

2. Peel apples, cut into quarters, remove cores (cutting each quarter at the core so it has a “flat” side), and toss the quarters in a large bowl with the lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of the sugar.

3. Using a 20cm frying pan as a guide, cut pastry into a round slightly larger than the pan, prick with a fork.

4. Melt butter in a 20cm non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Cover with the remaining sugar. Cook over medium-low heat, shaking pan occasionally to spread around any dark spots that appear, until a rich caramel forms.

5. Place apple quarters into pan, rounded side down, arranging them around pan. Cut remaining apple to fill gaps. Cook the apples over medium heat for about 10 minutes until caramel is bubbling up in the pan, shaking pan occasionally to prevent burnt spots.

6. Lay the pastry over the apples, tucking any protruding edges around edges of pan.

7. Place the pan in the oven, cook for about 25 minutes, or until the puff pastry has risen and cooked. The pastry should be dry and flaky. Stand tarte in pan for 10 minutes before carefully turning out onto a serving plate. Serve with cream.

Serves 4.

Voila! Bon Appétit!