Tarte Tatin apple pie. Lightened Tarte Tatin

Most seafood, including squid, cooked over an open fire, is an excellent healthy alternative to many of the other, fattier dishes we traditionally fry at picnics. Moreover, you can cook grilled squid at home, for example, grilled squid in a frying pan or grilled squid in the oven. However, lovers of dishes cooked over an open fire will never refuse the classic option: grilled squid. The smell of smoke and the beautiful brown crust greatly decorate the dish and stimulate additional appetite.

In addition to serving a ready-made dish from whole squid carcasses, you can afford to experiment. Grilled squid rings are very good; they allow you to make portions of different sizes and designs. A healthy salad with grilled squid, which, when supplemented with vegetables, is an even lighter dish.

Preparing squid for grilling takes just minutes. This explains its convenience for use outdoors. But when cooking squid over a fire, you need to take into account some nuances. The heat on the grill must be high, and therefore the cooking time is very short. Squid exposed to heat instantly turns into hard-to-eat rubber. It is enough to fry it for a couple of minutes on each side. Therefore, when you decide to grill stuffed squid, keep in mind that the minced meat should be almost completely ready to eat. Grilled squid has an excellent taste of its own, so you don’t need to worry too much about accompanying sauces and marinades. Just drizzle the dish with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Lemon juice, soy sauce, green onions and chili pepper will also work. Many lovers of rich taste use marinade for grilled squid. It won't hurt, try it.

To cook squid on the grill, you don’t have to look for a special recipe, it’s the same everywhere: prepare the squid, put it on the grill and in a couple of minutes it’s ready. The taste may differ only due to marinating or the use of related products. And the photo will tell you best what your finished grilled squid should look like. Therefore, when preparing for a picnic with grilled squid, study the recipes with photos first.

In addition, our tips will tell you how to cook squid on the grill:

Be sure to grease the grill grate with vegetable oil;

Frozen squid must be defrosted slowly, preferably in the refrigerator;

From fresh and unpeeled squid, you need to remove the pinkish skin, remove the entrails, and the backbone;

Squid is a very “wet” product. Therefore, after washing, they must be thoroughly dried before placing on the grill, otherwise they will not be fried, but will be stewed in their own juices;

Grill temperature should be above 150 degrees. This way the squid will cook quickly;

If you cook squid with tentacles, they need to be cut into pieces of the same size and thickness;

To prevent the squid from sticking to the grill, they should also be coated with a small amount of oil;

You can experiment with marinade for grilled squid. Add smoked paprika, chili powder and other spices to taste to the salt and pepper;

Monitor the frying time; it should not exceed three minutes on all sides.

Detailed step-by-step recipes for making the popular Tarte Tatin pie in France.

Grade
recipe

Time
(min)

Portions
(persons)

In 100 grams of the finished dish

2 gr.

13 gr.

Carbohydrates

224 kcal.

Option 1: Classic French apple pie Tarte Tatin

For the classic apple pie Tarte Tatin, it is better to use sour fruits. In a duet with sugar caramel, they will become an amazing filling. Ground cinnamon is added for flavor, but this is not a required ingredient.

Ingredients

• 100 grams of sugar;
• 45 grams of lemon juice;
• 200 grams of flour;
• 800 grams of apples;
• 250 grams of butter;
• 5 grams of cinnamon;
• 2 tbsp. l. water.

Cooking method

The tart dough is mixed without sugar. In the classic recipe it is made with butter, that is, shortbread. Chop the butter, but not all of it, 100 grams is enough, add flour to it and grind everything together into crumbs. Add two tablespoons of ice water and knead into a ball. Place in a bag and place in the refrigerator.

Let's prepare the filling. To do this, place the remaining butter in the frying pan in which the French pie will be baked, add 50 grams of sugar and place on the stove. Prepare caramel. This will take about five minutes. Add cinnamon at the end.

Cut the apples into neat slices, pour over lemon juice and place nicely in a frying pan with caramel. Do this carefully, as the mass is hot. Sprinkle the remaining sugar on top and simmer over low heat for a quarter of an hour, then cool slightly.

Take out the previously prepared dough, roll it out into a flat cake that will cover the mold with apples with a margin. Transfer to a frying pan, cover, and use a spatula to push the edges in to create sides.

We make several punctures on the cake and place the pie in a preheated oven. French Tatin will be baked for 30 minutes at 190°C.

Remove the pie from the oven and cool for 15-20 minutes. Then carefully use a spatula to separate the sides of the shortbread tart from the frying pan, cover with a flat plate and quickly turn over. If some apples have moved, then adjust the filling.

It is not advisable to replace butter with margarine in these baked goods. If this is not very noticeable in the dough, then the filling will be hopelessly spoiled. You need to take only high-quality oil with a fat content above 70%.

Option 2: French apple pie “Tarte Tatin” made from puff pastry

To prepare such a pie, you can use absolutely any dough. It turns out equally tasty on yeast and on a regular basis. For flavor, add lemon or orange zest, which must be finely chopped.

Ingredients

• 300 grams of dough;
• 3 large apples;
• 5 grams of cinnamon;
• 100 grams of sugar;
• 3 tsp. lemon juice;
• 1 tsp. zest.

Cooking method

Cut the peeled apples into slices, sprinkle with lemon juice, and set aside.

Combine sugar with two tablespoons of water, place on the stove and heat the caramel until it turns amber in color. Pour in the zest, stir, arrange the apple slices. Simmer over low heat for 15 minutes, sprinkle cinnamon on top.

Roll out a piece of dough, attach a pan lid to it, which is 3-5 centimeters larger than the diameter of the pan. Immediately make several punctures on the piece. This is necessary for steam to escape.

Transfer the pie base to the frying pan, cover with the filling, and tuck in the sides. Bake at 200°C until the dough is ready.

Cool the pie with the puff base until warm, then carefully turn it over. You can garnish with fresh orange or lemon slices, which go well with apples.

The zest gives an incomparable aroma not only to the filling, but also to the dough. This ingredient can be dried and stored for future use. Then you will always have a natural and healthy flavoring at hand.

Option 3: Apple Tarte Tatin with honey and batter

A variation of the French upside-down made from batter. This recipe captivates with its ease of preparation and the divine aroma of honey.

Ingredients

• 60 grams of honey;
• 4 apples;
• 10 grams of ripper;
• 200 grams of flour;
• 4 eggs;
• 100 grams of sugar;
• 150 grams of butter.

Cooking method

Line a baking pan with a piece of parchment and additionally grease with a drop of oil.

Separately, in a saucepan, melt sugar with half the recipe amount of honey and four tablespoons of water. Boil the amber-colored caramel, then remove from heat and immediately pour onto parchment.

Quickly cut the apples into slices, arrange them over the caramel in a beautiful pattern, and sprinkle with cinnamon if desired.

In a frying pan after caramel, melt the butter and cool.

Beat eggs with honey, add butter, add flour, add recipe amount of baking powder. Beat the dough again and pour the apples on top.

Bake French Tatin for 35 minutes at 190°C. Remove from the oven, cool slightly, turn over and carefully remove a piece of parchment.
You can prepare the dough without honey, but in this case, to improve the taste and beautiful color, you need to add a little granulated sugar, two spoons is enough.

Option 4: Apple Tarte Tatin with cottage cheese

An apple-curd version of the pie, which is also made from store-bought puff pastry. But if you wish, you can knead a sand base.

Ingredients

• 250 grams of dough;
• 600 grams of apples;
• 400 grams of cottage cheese;
• 150 grams of sugar;
• 3 tbsp. l. water;
• 1 tsp. cinnamon;
• 70 grams of butter.

Cooking method

Place butter in a frying pan, add granulated sugar, add water and cook regular caramel until a characteristic color and pleasant aroma appear.

Chop the apples, place in syrup, sprinkle cinnamon on top and simmer in your juice with caramel for 10 minutes. Cool slightly.

Grind the cottage cheese, you don’t need to add anything to it

Roll out the dough, trim the corners to make a flat cake, make several punctures.

Place a thin layer of pureed cottage cheese on the apples, cover the pie filling with the prepared layer of dough, and wrap it inside the edge.

Bake Tatin at 200°C for 20-25 minutes, depending on the readiness of the dough.

Based on the Tarte Tatin apple pie, you can prepare baked goods with other fillings. Especially in France, options with pears and plums are popular. Berries and soft fruits are used very rarely, as they dilute the caramel layer.

Apple pie Tatin (tarte Tatin) is one of the symbols of French cooking and is one of the ten most popular desserts in this country. It is not for nothing that every tourist who finds himself in France tries to visit some cafe and shell out 10 € (plus tip) there to taste a small piece of real Tatin. At the same time, none of the travelers even wonders why the Tatin apple pie has become so widespread and famous. But the answer is very simple: Tarte Tatin is prepared from the simplest, most accessible and cheapest ingredients, and is prepared quite quickly and with consistently excellent results. The enterprising French immediately realized this and made an ordinary apple pie one of their main attractions, and therefore a profitable source of income. Now I invite you, my dear readers, to expose this conspiracy and prepare the famous French dessert at home, after which, with a feeling of pride and deep satisfaction, you can drink it, as they say, from the belly. By the way, for reference, tarte Tatin, although sweet, is not particularly high in calories, so we will not cause serious damage to our figure.

Ingredients:

(1 tarte Tatin)

• shortbread dough:
• 250 gr. flour
• 120 gr. butter
• 1 yolk
• 2 tbsp. spoons of sugar
• pinch of salt
• 80 ml. ice water
• apple filling:
• 1 kg. sweet and sour apples
• 30 gr. butter
• 1 cup sugar
• zest of 1 small lemon
• ground cinnamon
• ground nutmeg (optional)

• First of all, let's prepare the shortcrust pastry for our tarte Tatin. To do this, measure out the required amount of flour and sift the flour. Add sugar and a pinch of salt to the flour.
• Chop the frozen butter into pieces with a knife and combine with flour. Rub the flour and butter with your fingertips to form crumbs.

• Add egg yolk. It is thanks to the yolk that the shortbread dough turns out crumbly.

• Let's start kneading the dough. Add ice water a little at a time. The dough for Tatin pie should not be very tight, but you cannot knead it too long and thoroughly, the butter should not melt. We form the dough into a flat cake, wrap it in cling film and put it in the refrigerator for an hour.

• Now let's prepare the baking dish. Classic French Tatin is baked in a deep cast-iron frying pan without a handle. We, modern housewives, have already completely forgotten about the existence of such utensils, so we will use what we have in the kitchen. This could be a special glass or silicone pie pan, a disposable foil pan, or a well-known springform pan. It is precisely on the last option that I want to dwell in more detail, so that later there will be no “OH!”
• As I found out from my own experience, springform molds from different manufacturers vary greatly in quality. There are very good forms that lock tightly and do not leak at all, but there are cheap market samples that always leak. For Tatin pie you need a form that does not leak at all!!! The fact is that when baking, apples release a lot of juice, in which they should caramelize. If this juice leaks, we will get dehydrated, slightly sweet slices that will not even stick to each other and form a single “body” of the pie. Therefore, before you start making Tatin, be sure to check that a suitable mold is available.
• If you have a springform pan, then pour water into it and watch. If the form is sealed and does not leak, then you can use it. Pour out the water, wipe dry, and then cover with parchment. To do this, cut out a circle of parchment 5 centimeters larger than the diameter of the mold. Place the paper on the bottom of the mold and crimp the emerging edges along the walls. This is done so that it is easy to remove the cake from the mold. Grease the parchment itself generously with butter.

• If you have a glass or silicone baking dish, then simply coat it with butter.
• Before you start preparing the filling, be sure to turn on the oven and set the temperature to 200 degrees. Tatin pie, like all baked goods, should be placed in a well-heated oven.
• For the Tatin filling, sweet and sour apples are best suited; during cooking, they will slightly contrast with the sugar caramel and add a special piquancy to the pie.
• Wash the apples, wipe them with a napkin, and then peel them. Cut each apple into four parts. It is most convenient to cut out the seed pods along with the seeds and stalks from the quarters. Then cut the quarters into another 3 or 4 slices (this depends on the size of the apples). The thickness of the apple slices should be like orange slices.

• Place the chopped apples on the bottom of the pan. We lay the slices in a pigtail around the circumference, tightly, with mutual overlap, so that after cooking they form an even layer of equal thickness.
• Sprinkle the apples laid out in the mold with lemon zest, which we remove from the fruit using a fine grater. Don’t forget to wash the lemon well first and scald it with boiling water, this will get rid of the wax that is used to treat the fruit for better preservation.
• After the lemon zest, sprinkle the apples generously with cinnamon; if desired, you can lightly sprinkle with grated nutmeg. To soften the filling, place pieces of butter on the apple layer.

• Next, fill the apple filling with sugar caramel. We make caramel in the same way as the candies we all made as children. Place a small frying pan over medium heat. When the frying pan is properly heated, we slowly begin to pour granulated sugar onto it.
• Attention! The amount of sugar should be adjusted depending on the sweetness of the apples. If the apples are sweet, then add less sugar.
• When the sugar begins to melt, add a new portion, and then another and another. In this way, we constantly increase the volume of melted sugar, but at the same time do not allow it to boil. The caramel should be constantly stirred with a spatula. If the caramel boils, it is a disaster; it will immediately darken and become bitter and unsuitable for the pie. If this happens, throw away the spoiled product without regret and start making caramel again.

• As soon as all the sugar has melted, quickly (so that the mass does not have time to thicken) pour the caramel onto the apples, while trying to evenly distribute the caramel over the entire area. It is at this very moment that you will feel the first fragrant wave of Tatin. Hot caramel will make apples, cinnamon and nutmeg smell fragrant and excite your culinary fantasies.

• Next step: take the dough out of the refrigerator, sprinkle the table with flour and roll out the cake about a centimeter larger than the diameter of your baking dish.

• We cover the apples with dough, bend the edge of the cake inside the mold, thereby forming a kind of plate in which the apple filling will lie. After this, use a fork or knife to pierce the dough all over the entire surface of the cake. These holes are necessary for the release of hot steam during baking; they will protect our Tatin pie from swelling and tearing.

• Place the pie in a well-heated oven. Bake the Tarte Tatin for 40-45 minutes at 200°C. Even if the dough is prepared earlier, it is not advisable to reduce the baking time, since the apples may not have time to caramelize. Therefore, if you notice that the cake is already very browned, cover the pan with a piece of foil and continue baking. Just remember to make a few small holes in the foil so that steam can escape freely.

• We take the fragrant Tatin out of the oven, let it cool and only then remove it from the mold. The fact is that after baking the mold is full of hot apple juice. And as you know, Tatin pie is an upside-down pie. This means that it is baked upside down, in other words, the apples that are now at the bottom of the pan are the top of the finished pie, and the shortbread is its bottom. But if you immediately turn a hot pie over, the hot caramel will immediately drip onto the crust, and the surface of the pie will remain without the slightest hint of caramel. In addition, excess liquid will make the cake soggy. Therefore, we must be patient and wait.
• To turn the tarte Tatin over, cover the mold with a dish and turn the entire structure over. Carefully remove the form. And now, finally, the same magnificent Tatin pie opens to our eyes at 10 € (plus tip) for a tiny piece.

• To give Tatin an extra flavor touch, I recommend brushing it with cognac or liqueur. Personally, I really like the taste of Italian Amaretto.

• The famous apple pie Tatin is ready. All you have to do is cut it into portions and serve it to the table. Tatin is a dessert, so the French eat it with ice cream or whipped cream, but we, Russian people, have experimentally found out that it is quite good with tea. That's all, bon appetit.