RIGHT-SIDE-UP APPLE TART.

We love you, Tarte Tatin, but it’s time to set things straight.

As much as I love a recipe that involves potential bodily harm, I think I’m done with the upside-down apple tart, as in the legendary Tarte Tatin.

Named for the Tatin sisters who ran a small auberge in Lamotte-Beuvron in the Loire Valley in the late nineteenth century, it has quite a few origin stories.

The most romantic is that one of the sisters dropped the tart and decided to bake it anyway, but with the pastry on top. Or perhaps she forgot the pastry and added it later.

The least romantic is that it is just one example of the many ‘renversée’  (reversed, or upside-down) tarts known throughout regional France at the time.  

The truth is it’s a very clever technique, in that the apples are cooked first on the stove-top in a sugar and butter caramel. As they cook, they drop their juices into the caramel and the whole thing becomes a hissing, foaming, golden elixir that makes the room smell of apple trees. If you cooked the apples and pastry together in the oven, there would be hell to pay, with all those juices sogging up the pastry.

Having cooked the apples, you then top them with pastry and bake until it is toasty brown. So far, so easy.

BUT…

It’s the turning, or inverting, of the straight-from-the-oven tart that calls for strong wrists and a brave heart, as it oozes scaldingly hot caramelised juices.

I’ve made it a squillion times (my masterclass recipe is on Good Food here) and never not freaked out just a bit, in the turning.

So, to the tune of Mighty Mouse’s “here I am, to save the day”, I figured what the world needs now is a right-side-up apple tart. No turning, no burning.

The apples are cooked in exactly the same way as for tarte Tatin, because why would you do them any other way, it’s divine. Then you just transfer them to a single sheet of pastry that you’ve spread with a quick and easy walnut paste, top the apples with the caramel from the pan, turn up the edges of the pastry, brush with egg wash, and bake.

Tarte Tatin meets rustic apple galette meets the end of terror in the kitchen.

WHY IT’S SMART.

Because it’s apple season, and The Pink Ladies have come to town. Or use golden delicious or good old grannies.

Because if you cook the apples in a 20 cm wide fry pan (with a good height to the sides for when the caramel goes through its bubble bath stage), you’ll only need three or four apples and a single sheet of either shortcrust or puff pastry, and you’re done.

Because you don’t need as much butter and sugar as you might think. They are just there to amplify the appleness.

Because the apples retain their lovely rounded shapes and don’t get all squishy as they do with a tarte tatin, as long as you cook them cut-side down, otherwise known as bottoms-up. Or as my pal Zoe says, “sunny-side up”.

Because the apples are virtually cooked, so you’re only using the oven for as long as the pastry takes to crisp and brown.

And because, and I may have mentioned this earlier, you don’t need to turn it over when it’s a seething mass of hot caramel.

From apples, to placing on walnut paste, to forming the border.

RIGHT-SIDE-UP APPLE TART

The walnut paste is a sort of pretend-frangipane for added nuttiness and ballast under the apples. You could make it with ground almonds instead. Or skip it. Serves 4.

• 4 pink lady, golden delicious or granny smiths

• 75 g butter

• 100 g caster sugar

• 1 sheet of puff or shortcrust pastry, thawed, kept cold

• 1 egg, beaten with a teaspoon of water or milk

Walnut paste:

• 75 g walnuts

• 2 tsp butter, melted

• 2 tsp any sort of sugar

• Pinch of flaky sea salt

• 2 tsp of the egg wash

Peel, halve and core the apples.

Melt the butter in a 20 cm fry pan or cast iron skillet and sprinkle with half the sugar.

Cook for 3 minutes over low heat to dissolve the sugar and start the caramelising.

Pack the apples in quite tightly (and carefully), round side up. You can overlap them at this stage as they will shrink as they cook.

Scatter with remaining sugar and cook over low heat for around 20 minutes until the apples soften and drop their juices, hissing and bubbling, into the caramel.

Keep going until the caramel is golden brown, without ever smelling burnt.

Remove from the heat, and leave to cool for 5 or 10 minutes (no longer, or it will set).

Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan-forced).

Place the sheet of pastry on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

To make the walnut paste, whiz the walnuts, butter, sugar, sea salt and egg to a rough paste, and spread over the middle of the pastry, leaving a 5cm border.

Gently transfer the apples to the pastry, placing them on the walnut paste. Drizzle with a few spoonfuls of the caramel in the pan.

Bring up the edges of the pastry and roughly tuck them in around the apples, creating a border.

Brush the pastry border with beaten egg, and bake the tart for 10 minutes.

Reduce heat to 190C and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.

Allow to cool for 10 minutes or more, then cut into wedges and serve.

#  Use a melon baller or a strong little teaspoon to core the apples.

# Pack the apples into the pan as tightly as you can because they will shrink as they cook. Once they have softened a bit, you can shmoosh them into place.

# If you have left-over caramel in the pan, spoon it over the apples towards the end of cooking to give them a lovely glossiness. (If it sets in the pan, reheat to soften).

# Serve with yoghurt and toasted walnuts, or a scoop of ice-cream or a drizzle of cream or a spoonful of crème fraiche.

Below, an idea of how the caramelising should happily seethe away.

Thanks for dropping by! Thanks also to Joseph Joseph and Frankful Agency for the fabulous pan to try out from their new Space Range, as demonstrated so thoughtfully at Saint Peter in Paddington.

I adore that the sides are straight instead of curved, that the handle folds back into the pan to fit into my saucepan drawer, and that even when I burnt the toasted walnuts in it, nothing bad happened to it. The walnuts, however, were a write-off.

Special thanks to Terry, for getting the first lot of apples - which I then ate - and for subsequently getting a second lot of apples for the tart.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to the continuing strength and resilience of First Nations people, communities and cultures.