I've been enjoying my "cooking like Julia" week, but tonight I decided not to do any major league cooking.
Since we had leftover Potato Gratinee and French Onion Soup, I decided today to make Tarte Tatin, or as we say it here in the USA "apple pie."
Now, my first experience with apple pie was the molten lava bricks one used to buy at McDonald's that burned the roof of your mouth. My mom never, to my knowledge, made apple pie when I was a kid.
Mom is allergic to apples.
We had cherry pie, blueberry pie, chocolate pie, of course pumpkin and pecan - dang, we had a lot of pies, now that I think about it. Not apple, though.
I have always been a bit intimidated by making pie, but I would do a cobbler once in a while. Now that I know how easy it is to make crust [flour, butter, water, duh] I will be making more pies.
But I looked at Julia's recipe and was intimidated. Wow.
I am happy to serve leftovers, but the "tatin" has to be yummy, and doable.
So I found Perfect Tarte Tatin in 10 Easy Steps. YES! I could do this one. I love that the author used the word "frankenstein" as a verb. I get way too excited about things like that.
I decided to deviate a bit from both the Awl recipe, and Julia's, and not use any lemon juice or lemon zest. I despise lemon zest. I find it unappealing. [LOL!]
I also used Braeburn apples.... because I like them best. I like a tart apple, but not crazy tart like Granny Smiths.
This is the pie before I put it in the oven:
Yes, I know the crust isn't perfect. I didn't have time to make it perfect. I needed to get a shower and get ready to go to the theater.
This is it after it came out of the oven:
It was incredibly good! I mean, phenomenal.
Michael had leftover gratin for dinner, and when we got back from the theater [I also review plays] he said he was hungry, and proceeded to eat 3 BIG pieces of tarte tatin.
SCORE!
