This apple tart is from Canale Cinque's lunchtime news. Simple things, but interesting too. It will take about a half hour to do, including the baking time. It makes individual portions, and the chef who did the demonstration used a 6-inch (15 cm) diameter tinned copper skillet with a fairly long metal handle. In other words, a pot that's good on the stove but also in the oven.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
- One six-inch (15 cm) diameter oven-proof skillet per person
- 1 1/2 medium-sized flavorful apples per person, peeled, cored and sliced (you may need a little more)
- Sugar
- Powdered cinnamon
- A pinch of powdered nutmeg
- A sheet of commercially prepared puff pastry dough, rolled out about 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick
Preparation:
Preheat your oven to 420 F (210 C)
Dust the bottoms of the pans with liberally sugar and heat them over a moderate flame until the sugar caramelizes. Arrange the apples in a ray pattern in the pans over the caramelized sugar. Dust them lightly with the cinnamon and the nutmeg, and also a little more sugar.
Cut 6-inch diameter rounds of puff pastry dough and lay them over the apples, pressing down around the edges. Cut an X in the center of each cover to allow the steam to escape, and bake the pies for 15-20 minutes. Remove the pies from the oven and remove them from their pans by flipping the pans upside down and tapping them sharply against your work surface. Arrange the finished pies on elegant plates and decorate them as you prefer; the doing the demonstration used a syrup, which he squeezed from a pastry bag with a thin nozzle, but I would be tempted to serve them with good quality vanilla ice cream, and a passito, a sweet white wine, perhaps from Pantelleria.
Dust the bottoms of the pans with liberally sugar and heat them over a moderate flame until the sugar caramelizes. Arrange the apples in a ray pattern in the pans over the caramelized sugar. Dust them lightly with the cinnamon and the nutmeg, and also a little more sugar.
Cut 6-inch diameter rounds of puff pastry dough and lay them over the apples, pressing down around the edges. Cut an X in the center of each cover to allow the steam to escape, and bake the pies for 15-20 minutes. Remove the pies from the oven and remove them from their pans by flipping the pans upside down and tapping them sharply against your work surface. Arrange the finished pies on elegant plates and decorate them as you prefer; the doing the demonstration used a syrup, which he squeezed from a pastry bag with a thin nozzle, but I would be tempted to serve them with good quality vanilla ice cream, and a passito, a sweet white wine, perhaps from Pantelleria.
