Tarte Tatin II

Tarte Tatin

This version of Tarte Tatin is taken from a French cookbook and modified to make it easier,  this is how I do my Tarte Tatin!

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Roll out one pate brisee, or pate feuillette and cut them to the size of the tart dish.

Prepare the apples, I use half green and half red apples, you can use all green, but I find the mix green/red tastes better!  Peel, core and cut into 8 pieces, depends on the size of the apples, for a tart dish of 28 cm, I use between 9 - 12 apples. Squeeze a lemon onto the apples to prevent them from turning brown.

For the caramel ~ In a pot, melt 70 gm unsalted butter , 4 tbsp brown sugar and 3 tbsp sugar.  You can use only white sugar instead of brown but taste is not so good!

In the meantime, prepare the flour mix.  In a bowl mix, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp flour and 1 tsp cinnamon powder.  You can use only white sugar for this too!

First layer of apples with the flour mix in a bowl

Line the tarte dish with parchment paper, pour the caramel into the dish.  The best part of doing this caramel is don't have to wait for the sugar to turn brown if you use brown sugar.  Arrange a layer of apples on the dish, sprinkle 2/3 of the flour mix onto the first layer of apples, arrange the rest of the apples, then sprinkle the rest of the flour mix.

Ready for the oven

Bake in the oven at 180°C for 20 minutes.  Place the pate brisee or pate feuillette over the apples  and continue to bake for another 20 minutes at 200°C.

Remove from the oven and cool before removing from the tart dish.  Best serve with vanilla ice cream.

Tomate Farcie (Stuffed Tomatoes)

Tomate Farcie

In France, they love to stuff everything from vegetables to meat!  When I arrived here, I don't understand much French and one day I bought some stuffed veal, thinking that it is quite cheap, after roasting the veal, discovered that the veal is acutally stuffed!

When I was doing this stuffed tomatoes, my mind got transported back to Malaysia, yes, it's yong tau foo!   Here is the recipe from Cyril Lignac, a French celebrity chef!

Ingredients :
6 large tomatoes
350 gm sausage meat
3 shallots, chopped
3 stems of parsley, remove stem and roughly chopped
2 garlic, chopped
1 egg
50 ml milk
2 slice of overnight bread
1 bouquet garni
salt and pepper

Method :
1.  Wash and dry the tomatoes. Cut a hat and put aside, remove the seeds from the tomatoes and lightly salt the inside of the tomatoes and set aside.  Reserve the inside of the tomatoes.
2.  Heat the oven to 150°C.  Soak the bread in the milk and break them up, then add the sausage meat.  In France, this is sold like minced meat, when I first arrived I bought it to cook some Chinese style soup, yucky! Add the rest of the ingredients, the garlic, the shallots, the parsley, the egg, salt and pepper. Mix well.
3.  Use a fork to prick the inside of the tomates before adding the filing.  Place them on baking pan, leave the tomato hat on the side of the stuffed tomatoes.  Mix a cup of water with the inside of the tomatoes that was set aside in 1 above.  Add the bouquet garni and pour them into the baking pan.  Put in the oven for 45 minutes, baste regularly with the roasting juice. Remove from oven and serve immediately.

Lazy cook does not reserve the hat on the tomatoes but cut the tomatoes in half so that it looks like more, here is the picture of one done!

Before roasting