Okay so I'm gonna make a classic French
dessert now, couldn't come here and not do it. Tarte tatin invented by the Tatin sisters, great local cooks from about a
hundred miles away from here in the late 18th century. There are a few stories about
how it came to be, but the long and short of it is. One day, one of the sisters was
overworked, stressed, she was caramelizing some apples and apparently
it was burning, so she put some pastry on top of it,
whacked it in the oven to finish cooking, turned it out, served it, the whole thing
was a great great success and that was the birth of the tarte tatin. And the
exciting thing is probably half the mistakes ever made in the kitchen are
successes. First of all, get yourself some really
nice eating apples. We've got five apples here, remove the core, then what I want is
100 grams of sugar. Then you want about 100 millilitres of Calvados, heat that up
in a pan. I quite like the idea of using some vanilla, run the knife down the
middle of the vanilla pod, there we go. Already the vanilla and the Calvados
smells good. I'm just gonna put the apples in now, and then also a good knob
of butter and that's obviously going to turn the straight caramel almost into a sort
of butterscotch, toffee-like consistency. Never ever touch caramel because it's really really hot. Apples and caramel,
you know toffee apples, it's one of the nicest things in the world, but I don't
really want you just to stop at that. Pears, peaches, apricots and you can
really use your imagination and puff pastry. Everyone over here in France uses
these packs that you get and it's all pre rolled out, perfectly. Can you believe that? Probably for Tarte Tatin. So this you can actually
get back home as well it's really good. Puff pastry's obviously the you know the
mille feuille, the many many layers of pastry and and butter so when it cooks it's
going to expand like that. Right over the top and then almost tuck it in very
quickly like you're tucking your little Bambino in bed and then that is gonna be
beautiful. I'm gonna cook that for around 20 to 25 minutes at around about 190
degrees Celsius, 350/360 Fahrenheit and when that's cooked it'll be crisp
and golden. You see what that's gonna look like, it's gonna be great. Look at that. Okay so this has had about 20 minutes and when you take it out the oven,
you pretty much carefully and quickly got to turn it out because when that
caramel sets hard it will be like glue. The best way to do it is to put your
plate over and just confidently all in one, one, two, three and there you go. Okay
so to serve this, what I want to do is get some ice cream, put it in the fridge,
let it get to a kind of like a scoopable texture, get some Armagnac, some hot water
and some prunes, boil it up and puree it right. And then just ripple that
together. Just made this beautiful prune Armagnac ice cream. Look at that. Armagnac and
prunes are massive in this area. Its a big classic. I love the way it kind of goes
down all the little gullies, straight through, there we go. Take it off, so hats
off to the tatin sisters for that brilliant mistake they made over a
hundred years ago.
