Tarte Tatin

Please note - this is not an authentic Tarte Tatin!

Ingredients
Pastry:
    plain flour
    butter
   water
Filling:
   4 or 5 apples
    sugar
    butter
   water
   spice (optional)

Equipment

mixing bowl
rolling pin
apple peeler
saucepan
oven dish / baking tray
plate

oven:
time in oven: about an hour

preparation time:
making dough
roll out dough 4 times and shape
peel and chop apple
make caramel and cook apple

Cooking process

Put on the oven.
Make the rough puff pastry (or buy some!): Divide the butter into 4. a quarter of the butter into the plain flour. Add enough water to make a soft, but not wet, dough.
Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Use extra flour to stop things sticking. Cut a third of the butter into small pieces and cover two thirds of the dough with them. Fold the uncovered third of the dough over part of the butter-covered dough, then the remaining third over the top.
Roll out the dough into a rectangle again, and repeat the butter covering and folding process. Do it a third time. Roll out the dough one last time, into the shape and size of your dish/baking tray (height about a quarter of an inch).
Measure out the butter and sugar for the caramel and put in saucepan. Add a little water, to dissolve the sugar. Put to heat on low.
Peel and slice apples (not too thin). Put in the cooking caramel as you prepare them. You can add a little spice if you want, such as cinnamon. Leave the apples to cook until the mixture goes a bit brown (caramelises). The water is there to stop the butter and sugar burning before you add the apple. Once the juices start flowing from the cooking apples, you can probably turn up the heat.
Put the cooked apple and all juices into the oven dish/baking tray. Put the pastry on top. Put in the oven, and cook.
To serve, you're supposed to turn the whole thing upside down onto a plate. Note that my plate was round, and the baking tray square!

Comments

I have heard two contradictory stories about the origin of this recipe. One was that the sisters Tatin made an apple pie, but forgot about it, and left it in the oven far too long. When serving, they dropped the pie so it ended upside down. I don't believe this. The sisters Tatin were French, and the French make tarts (with the pastry underneath) not single crust pies (with the patry above). Also the French are careful with food, and would neither forget a pie in the oven, or drop one!
The other story sounds more plausible. Here, the sisters Tatin didn't have an oven at all, and worked out a way to cook a tart on top of the stove, by cooking it at a low temperature for a long time, with the pastry on top, and then turning it over when finished.
The recipe that I copied this from (who came up with the first story) started cooking the pie on top of the stove, complete with pastry, but transferred it to the oven for most of the cooking (which suggests the remenants of the second story). I have taken a different approach - cooking the apples in the caramel first, then constructing the pie / tart, to put in the oven. It seemed to work.