Apple Tart
by Kai Chan
David Tanis has a rustic French apple tart recipe in his latest cook book, “Market Cooking”. This tart looks beautiful, tastes good and is very straight forward to make.
For the dough: mix 1 cup of all purpose flour,1 stick ( 1/4 lb ) of softened unsalted butter, 1/4 cup of ice water, a pinch of salt. I usually mix everything by hand. The outcome is rather messy, press the it together into a rectangular shape, and cover the surface with a bit of flour, wrap it in a piece of parchment paper about 10 inches long, and leave in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 400 ºF.
Peel 2 lbs. of apples, cut vertically into quarters, and remove the cores and reserve. Slice the apple into 1/8 inches half moon shape pieces.
Unwrap the parchment paper and roll out the cold dough in it to a rectangle about 6 by 9 inches. Arrange the apple slices over the pastry in rows, leaving a 1 inch border of dough all around. Fold the border over to enclose the apples. Sprinkle with about 3 table spoons of sugar. Slide the parchment paper with the tart onto a sheet pan and bake until the apple slices are browned and the pastry is crisp and caramelized, about 45 minutes. Cool on a rack.
Cook the apple cores and half a cup of sugar with a cup of water in a pot over medium heat, simmer for about 20 minutes to form a syrup. Strain the syrup and use to glaze the tart when it is cool enough to handle.
Serve the tart as it is or with vanilla ice cream.
