Thursday, July 24, 2003

Now we begin, now we start.  Thursday morning, I got two tarts.  Apple tarts – Tarte aux Pommes and Tarte NORMANDE aux Pommes.  I made the pie crusts for the tarts last night, as well as one of the pies.  It turns out that making pie crusts out of Pate Brisee Sucree, which is just like Pate Brisee only, as you might guess, with extra sugar, in a ninety-degree kitchen, is not so easy.  Especially making two patches.  I worked as fast as I could, smooshing together the butter and shortening into the flour and sugar, adding water, performing the fraisage -- which sounds so very dirty that I’m sorry to have to burst your bubble before you come up with some elaborate Story-of-O-style scenario for me involving Crisco, a marble pastry board, and fruits of various sorts, and tell you that it just means smearing the dough across the board to sort of feather out the fat – chilling it, then rolling it out and fitting it into springform pans, but even working so very very hard, I had to scream at Eric several times.  Dinner, meanwhile, was something I don’t recall.  Oh.  Yes.  Hamburgers with rosemary-roasted potatoes.  We were meant to used the leftover Sauce Alsacienne, which, you may recall, was a sort of mayonnaise made with soft-boiled egg yolks, with capers and green onions and some other stuff beat into it.  Well, that plan ended when, after sitting out on the kitchen table for twenty minutes, the Sauce Alsacienne, which had been most mayonnaise-y in texture when it came out of the fridge, transformed into something alarmingly liquid.  We could have made cocktails with it, I supposed, but I was not feeling adventurous.  I had had a discouraging day, you know the ones.  When I’d walked out of the house that morning, I had felt pretty darned sexy – offbeat in a big, interestingly cut white high-waisted skirt and a light little fluttery vintage top.  It wasn’t until I got to work that I realized that the skirt really could use a good trip to the dry cleaners.  And it wasn’t until nearly halfway through the day that I went to the bathroom and, seeing myself in the mirror, realized that I in fact looked like a clown.  And then with the overheated pastry-making and what not, I was irritated and looking for a little sympathy, not melted mayo.  So we did without. Sitting at the table after dinner, finishing up your glass of New Zealand white, is a lovely feeling.  The only thing that can mar it is knowing you have to back to the kitchen and make Tarte aux Pommes.       The nice thing about Tarte aux Pommes, it must be said, is that once the pie crust is baked, it’s mostly about peeling and slicing apples, which doesn’t need to be done in the kitchen.  I actually managed to watch all of the Daily Show.  I sliced three cups of the apples into 1/8 inch slices, and tossed them with some butter and sugar.  The rest I just chunked up and dumped into a pot.  I cooked them, covered for probably half an hour or so until they got good and applesaucey, then stirred in some apricot preserves I’d passed through a sieve, a fourth cup of rum, some sugar – taking my lesson and adding less than Julia calls for – three tablespoons of butter and some cinnamon, and boiled it until it was good and goddamned soft.  This I dumped into the pie crust I’d baked, and topped with the apple slices, which I arranged oh-so-Martha-like in concentric circles.  And that was it.  Threw it in the oven for half an hour or so, until the apples were lightly browned.  Took it out, glazed it with some sieved orange marmalade, since I’d run out of apricot preserves.  And that was that. I say “that was that” as if it wasn’t 12:30 at night and I didn’t have to get up at five to make the Tarte NORMANDE aux Pommes. Get up I did, though not, I must admit, at 5 just exactly.  Luckily, Tarte Normande aux Pommes is relatively simple, and I’d taken a shower while the pie was baking last night.  I say “luckily,” as if as of this writing the Tarte Normande aux Pommes was safely finished and in my belly.  It isn’t, but I have high hopes, sort of. I started by peeling a pound of apples and slicing them into 1/8 inch slices.  These I tossed with cinnamon and sugar, and arranged in the second pastry shell I baked last night.  I stuck that in the oven for twenty minutes, whilst I wrote a good deal of this post.  When the apples were tender, I took out the tart and set it on a rack to cool while I beat together an egg with some sugar until pale and thick, with that ribbon thing.  Or that was the idea.  I had a good deal of trouble getting the mixture to thicken up.  I suspect it might have something to do with the kitchen being roughly 100 degrees after I left the oven on all night.  I started with a hand whisk, moved on to the electric beaters, finally decided ah, fuck it, it was thick enough.  Beat in a fourth cup of flour, then a half cup of cream, then three tablespoons of brandy.  That I poured over the apples in the tart, and stuck in the oven.  I was to bake it for ten minutes, until “the cream begins to puff,” then sprinkle on some powdered sugar and stick it back in for another twenty minutes.  Well, “puff” is probably a little optimistic for what the pie was doing after ten minutes, but I sprinkled on the sugar anyway.  Now we’re on the last bit of baking – we’ll see.  The first tart, anyway, looks pretty – the edge of the crust is all jagged and uneven, I like to think of it as “rustic.” Okay, it’s out now.  Looks pretty good – puffy, even.  I am going to eat it now.  Ta.   7:49:46 AM    comment []