Apple Desserts | The French Chef Season 7 | Julia Child

Julia Child showcases La Tarte Tatin! This is a bottoms-up French tarte which, when served in the best Paris restaurants, is named after the Demioselles Tatin.

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Cooking legend and cultural icon Julia Child, along with her pioneering public television series from the 1960s, The French Chef, introduced French cuisine to American kitchens. In her signature passionate way, Julia forever changed the way we cook, eat and think about food.

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-Apples and cream,
this is really
the temptation of Eve.
We’re doing tarte tatin,
apple desserts,
today on "The French Chef."
♪♪
♪♪
-"The French Chef"
is made possible
by a grant
from the Polaroid Corporation.
-Welcome to "The French Chef."
I’m Julia Child.
Today, we’re gonna do
a very famous
apple dessert called
la tarte de tatin,
and there it is, and I’m going
to hide it from view
until we get farther
along with it.
And this is a dessert
that uses sliced apples
and any dessert
that does use sliced apples,
and you want the apples
to stay in shape,
you have to get the kind of
apples that will stay sliced
and will not cook up into mush
because you want them…
Oh.
That wasn’t such a pretty slice.
I’m gonna give you
a better one.
You want them to look just about
like that when they’re cooked,
and so you’ve got to get
the right kind of apple,
and you don’t want to get
a mushy kind of an apple
like a Gravenstein
or a MacIntosh
because they just
turn into nothing,
and they’re much too watery.
Three very good apples
are Golden Delicious,
Rome Beauty and York Imperial,
and it depends really on
where you live
whether you can get
these apples.
If you happen to be living
in the canning country,
you might be able to get
Greenings, Newtons or Monroes,
which are used by canned
apple slicers,
or some other good varieties,
again depending
on where you live,
are Baldwins,
Northern Spies and Cortlands.
These are Cortlands.
Unfortunately apple varieties
you don’t find
very much of in markets,
but you can always get
the Golden Delicious,
which is a very good apple.
And when you get apples,
keep them in the refrigerator
because then they should be kept
at around 34, 35 degrees,
and if you slice them ahead…
I’ve got about 3 or 4
quarts of apples here…
They will keep their color
if you, for 3 or 4 quarts,
use the juice of half a lemon
and grate some lemon peel
into it
and then 1/2 cup of sugar,
and then stir them around
with a purple spoon,
and they’ll keep their color.
And you do have, I think,
a problem with apple desserts
and apple pies
of excess juices.
You’ll see here that
there’s a lot of…
I got so many apples here,
you can’t see it very much…
but a lot of juice has already
exuded from these apples,
so doing them ahead
with the lemon
does help you
to get the juice out
because if you have
too much juice,
the apples take
too long to cook,
and they get juicy
and then they bubble out
into the bottom of the stove,
and you just have a mess.
So I think it’s a very good idea
to do them a little bit ahead.
Now, this is a tart, and tart
always has a pie crust.
I’m always trying to urge you
to learn how to make pie crusts
because I think
you’re gonna find
that this is a very easy method.
And for this particular tart,
we just want one crust.
So we want 1 cup of flour
into the bowl,
and you just dip the flour in
and level it off
and plunk into the bowl.
Then you want 3/4ths stick
of chilled, hard, cold butter,
and you cut it up,
letting the utensils
fall where they may,
and I always find
that the easiest way
is to cut it in 4,
and I only wanted 3/4s,
so I don’t need
that amount of it,
then slice it up
because this gives you
a little bit of a head start.
Then that goes into your flour,
and then we want 2…
2 tablespoons —
about 2 tablespoons —
of vegetable shortening.
And that is just
about 2 tablespoons.
I think for a small amount,
get used to measuring it
not by having
to put it into a tablespoon
because that’s such
a messy, silly business.
Then we want 1 tablespoon
of sugar,
and I’ve got my sugar over here.
And this,
I will actually measure,
and we want a little bit
of salt.
There’s 1 tablespoon of sugar
and just a pinch of salt.
And if you were making a quiche,
you’d do just the reverse.
You’d use 2 teaspoons of…
Excuse me, 1/2 teaspoon of salt
and just a pinch of sugar
for color.
And then you have now
the problem of mixing the butter
and the dough together
because you want to get
the butter
broken into little granules
covered by flour.
I used to think it was really
immoral
to do anything by machine.
Everything had to be done by the
hands and the old-fashioned way,
or it wasn’t going
to be any good.
Now I think it’s really silly
to be so old-fashioned.
I’m for the machine.
And you can use just a plain,
ordinary handheld blender,
and that beats in the…
mixes in the flour
and the butter very easily,
but even more easily
is one of these large mixers,
which has special attachments.
In this case, this mixer has not
only this usual beater,
but it also has a flat beater,
which is made
especially for pastry mixing.
And I think this is
particularly good
because any time you’re
gonna make pastry,
I think it’s a good idea
to make an enormous amount,
particularly when it’s as easy
as you’re
gonna see this is to make.
And now, where was I?
Yes.
One other good thing
that this machine
has which is a splatter shield,
and you put this on the bowl,
and when you beat it,
the flour doesn’t beat all…
doesn’t spray all over you.
And, with a little bit
of jockeying,
this goes right in.
And I’m gonna plug this in,
and I’m just gonna show you
how easy this is to do.
And this,
in about half a minute,
is gonna break up all of
the fat and the flour together,
and your hot hands haven’t
gotten into the flour,
so that you’re not gonna
run into that…
what I call the hot
hands syndrome,
which usually ruins pastries.
Ah.
There.
Now that is done,
and I want to show you.
If I can get that
splatter shield,
I want to show you how it looks.
Ahh.
See, that has just all been
broken up together,
and you want to stand
right over it
when you’re doing it
in the machine
because otherwise you can heat
up the fat and the flour,
and then
it’ll all melt together,
which you do not want it to do.
So now we want to have 1/3 cup
of ice water,
and I think it’s
a very good idea
to get in the habit
of always using ice water
because you put…
The main thing is
that you always want
to keep your pastry cold.
So in goes that 1/3 cup
of ice water,
and then just about…
a little bit of beating…
…just until it forms
into a mass, and it is done.
Now, isn’t that…
It’s really easy.
And it’s just really…
If you don’t have one
of these big machines,
it really is just as easy
with a small one.
I’m gonna put this out
onto my pastry model,
and you can see
what it looks like.
Then after you’ve done this,
it should rest and chill
because the butter
has to harden up again.
It always looks
a little bit soft,
but you have to have
enough water in it
so that the gluten
in the flour…
has all been moistened.
Put on a little bit of flour,
and you don’t want to knead…
Don’t knead it at all,
just form it into a ball,
and then wrap it in some
plastic wrap and chill it.
If I can get this off…
There.
Then put that either in ice
or in the icebox.
I happen to have some ice,
so I’ll just put it in there,
and then that’s going
to keep…
That’s gonna chill,
and you have to,
when you’re making pastry,
you have to let the dough rest
because the gluten in the flour
has become activated
and excited, and it…
As it joins,
all the molecules join together,
they become rather elastic,
and they will fight you
when you roll it out.
So be sure, when you’re making
pastry, make it…
Well, make it at least 2 hours
before you want to use it
and let it chill
or let it chill overnight,
and you can even put it
into the freezer.
I mean, it freezes perfect.
It’ll freeze for about a year.
So that’s why if you’re going to
make it in a machine,
I always think rather
than making, say, just enough
for the recipe
that you’re using,
I would quadruple this recipe.
In other words, I’d use 4 cups
of flour
and four times
the 3/4 stick of butter
and four 1/3 cups
of water and salt
and just use what was necessary
and then freeze the rest.
Now this tart that we’re going
to do is an upside-down tart.
That means that it’s a very
French type of upside-down one.
In the original recipe,
it is said
that they cook it in a pan
like this which is called
a sauter,
and all the apples
go into the pan,
and then the pastry goes on top,
and then when it’s all done,
you turn it upside down.
This is not a pan
that everyone will have.
You can use just a plain cake
pan like this,
but I’m gonna try and keep
somewhat in the presumed methods
of which they used to do it,
so I’m gonna use
a nice old American skillet.
And with this…
I’m gonna move this back
a little closer to me.
Now, this is not a recipe
for when you’re planning to diet
because it has to have
a lot of butter
in the bottom of the pan…
…because you want to
caramelize the bottom of it.
And that’s soft butter.
This pan is about 7 1/2
inches on the bottom diameter
and about 8 1/2 on the top,
and it’s about 2 inches thick.
And then it’s gonna have
some sugar,
and it has to have
1/3 inch of sugar.
And remember, this is all
because it’s all to caramelize.
And as we go along with it,
you’ll see how it works.
Now, that’s a heavy bunch of
sugar in the bottom of the pan.
Then in some recipes…
I know this is a recipe
that it’s gotten
to be rather chic
and a lot of people have made it
in French restaurants,
and I think some of the recipes
have been too gussied up,
and I prefer
the much more simple kind
that’s just a straightforward
butter and sugar and so forth
because I think that one
can become too fancy,
and then you have lost
the taste of the original.
And now, when you have this,
you will do only
at the last minute
after your pastry
has all been rested,
and you’re ready to do it in,
say, about…
You can do it about an hour
and a half to 2 hours
before you go to serve it
or maybe a little longer.
But once you get your apples
arranged in the pan,
you can’t let it sit because
the apples will exude juice,
and you may not be getting the
kind of caramel that you’d like.
So I’m gonna start putting
these apples in,
and this is gonna be,
as you know,
an upside-down cake,
so that you have to arrange them
so that they will look…
You have to try and think
of yourself upside down
so that they’re going to look
nice when you reverse the pan,
so this bottom layer
has to go very evenly.
I got…turned that one around
the wrong way.
What you hope because
it doesn’t always turn out
exactly the way you hope,
but what you hope
is that it’s gonna reverse
absolutely perfectly,
and you’ll have this
beautiful design.
You know the…
I have never been to the place
where this tart
supposedly originated,
but it’s in a little town
called Lamotte-Beuvron,
and next time you’re motoring
around France
and you’re in the Loire
Châteaux country
and you get to Orléans,
about 25 miles due south
on Route N20…
…is…
is the Auberge Tatin.
Now, I’m gonna put a little
more butter on that,
a little more sugar…
Where’d my…
Oh, here’s my sugar.
And then the rest of the layers
can go on rather fast.
But in this town of
Lamotte-Beuvron on Route L20
is the Auberge Tatin,
at least the last time I looked.
There, and fill that up
a little more,
and then you are ready
to put on the pastry.
So I’m gonna clear
all the decks here.
You should really let that rise
up a little bit more in a dome
than I did,
but the pastry
is now ready to be rolled on.
As you’ll see, this is cold
and hard as it should be.
And you want to beat it.
This is not an actual
rolling pin.
It’s one that my husband made
for me out of an old
garage broom handle,
and it really works very nicely.
It’s certainly much better than
those knotty little rolling pins
that I just saw the other day
when I was in the food
kitchen equipment department.
They have these little,
tiny rolling pins
that were about 8 inches long,
and I haven’t any idea
what in the world
you could use them for.
Now this is to be…
This should be about the size
of the pan,
so it should be a little bit
larger than that…cover
and this should be cut.
I’m just gonna cut that out
a little larger than the cover.
You could use a pastry wheel
or just a little knife.
Then any leftover pastry
that you can simply
put in with the rest
of your normal…
of the amount
that you have made.
This goes over.
Now this is gonna go over
to the stove,
and it’s gonna start
its career on a high burner
because you want
to start it cooking
and start caramelizing it
right away
and make little holes in.
I’m just doing you
a token of this,
but let it sit over heat
for about 4, 5 minutes
until the juices have bubbled up
and begin to get rather thick,
and then put it into
a 425-degree oven,
and it should bake
about half an hour
until the pastry
is nice and brown
and until the juices
are nice and thick.
And then again, you end up on
the stove
because you want to loosen it,
and you want to caramelize it
a little more.
I’m not sure that that has
completely caramelized,
but I’m gonna unmold it anyway
because as you’re gonna see,
if everything doesn’t happen
quite the way you’d like,
it doesn’t make
too much difference
because you can fix it.
So this goes out
onto the platter.
That unmolded very badly,
but that was a little loose.
But I’ll just have to show you
that it’s not gonna make
too much difference
because it’s all
gonna fix up…
That’s too bad because
it does look very nice when…
I just wonder, actually,
if these were supposed
to be Cortland apples.
If…They might have
been mismarked,
but this is going to be…
I think this is the kind
of thing…Now, look at it.
This looks perfectly all right.
And we’re gonna
caramelize it.
I think this is the kind
of thing you have to expect
even if you have guests
peering at you in the kitchen
because you can show how clever
you are by fixing everything up.
I’m gonna put some powdered
sugar on it,
and then I’m gonna
caramelize it under the broiler,
and you aren’t gonna know
that anything wrong has happened
except I’m sorry
that I’ve also given you
the illustration of the perfect
tarte de tatin,
but I’m sure that the
demoiselles Tatin
probably ran into
little troubles themselves
because everyone does.
The reason I’m putting
this foil on is
so that my plate will not burn
when I go to the oven.
I’m gonna take this right now
to the broiler,
and we’re gonna broil it,
and this powdered sugar
is gonna caramelize the top,
which you would very probably
have had to do anyway,
particularly if you’d done it
in a cake pan
because it doesn’t brown.
The bottom can’t brown
in a cake pan
because it isn’t…
because it’s not thick enough.
So this is…
This broiler is…
I’m just gonna watch that.
I haven’t…
I have another one,
so you’re gonna see two.
You’re gonna see one that
unloaded properly
and this other one that didn’t,
but you’re gonna see
that it works perfectly well.
And this, you don’t want
the broiler to be on too high
because you want
an even caramelization.
I’ve got it on really
rather medium.
Keep your eye on it a bit
to make sure
that the heat isn’t too high.
I’m gonna make it rather low.
I think about 2 or 3 minutes,
and during that period,
I’m gonna…
We’re gonna discuss
what you could serve with it,
which is a crème au de la crme
Chantilly
or a crème fraîche.
And crème fraîche is very heavy
French cream.
It looks like sour cream,
but it isn’t sour.
It’s a very heavy cream that has
thickened all by itself,
and you can get it
everywhere in France,
and you buy it in any crémerie,
and my favorite
crémerie when we were in France
is at the Place Ozaire
in Grasse,
and Grasse is the head
of the perfume industry,
and it’s in the Alpes-Maritimes
in the south of France.
And I’d love you
to see this market.
I want you to see it,
and I want you to see
the crémerie and the cream.
And this is in a lovely
arcaded place
which has vegetables
and fruits on one end,
and it’s…In the wintertime,
the trees have no leaves,
and the sun pours in,
and in the summertime,
the leaves
are all over the trees.
It’s just simply beautiful.
It’s just so colorful.
It’s not very big,
and at one end, this end here,
it has flowers every season
of the year, winter and summer.
It’s just blooming with flowers
at that fountain end.
[ Bell tolling ]
-[ Speaking French ]
-I think everybody goes there
for the market
just because it’s so pretty.
And right across from
the market,
about opposite where the
vegetables are, is my crémerie.
It also has lovely…
A French crémerie
has everything in it,
cheeses and olives and cream.
There it is.
And I asked Madame la Crémière
to come outside
and show us what
the cream looked like,
so you could really get
a good view of it.
-[ Speaks French ]
-Oui.
Voilà.
Mmm.
[ Speaking French ]
Ah, bien.
-Merci.
-Au revoir.
I did want you to see
how that cream looked
because you’ve seen
exactly how it looks,
and now I can show you
that you can really
just about duplicate it here.
You take one part of regular,
commercial soured cream
and put it into a pan,
and then two parts of heavy
cream and beat them in nicely.
The reason for using
the sour cream is that it…
You want to replace
the lactic acids
and ferments in natural cream,
and then you put it over heat,
and you stick your finger on it,
and all you want to do
is to just heat it just enough
until the chill is taken off
the cream, and then pour it…
You can leave it in its pan
or pour it into a container
and let it sit overnight,
and it will thicken up
just all by itself.
And here’s what it looks like
when it has thickened up.
As soon as it has thickened up,
you refrigerate it.
And there you are.
That’s just about…
Stir it up, and you’ve really
just about duplicated,
and it’s practically the same
in taste as the French cream.
And what’s also lovely about it
is that,
with regular, commercial sour
cream, you can’t cook with it.
It curdles, but with this kind
of cream, you can cook with it
just as you can
with French cream.
And also the great thing
is that you can…
It keeps for about 10 days,
and after you’ve used it,
if you just have
a little bit left, like an inch,
you can start it all over again
just like a sourdough.
And you can keep the same mix
going like a sourdough
for quite some time,
and then if by any chance,
it does turn sour,
you just have
to start over again.
Now I want to see
how our tarts are.
I’m gonna show you two…
I think that could have gone
a little higher.
First, I’m gonna show you
the one that looks
the way it’s supposed to.
In this case, you see the slices
have all stayed evenly
and nicely the way they should.
This one also was done properly
in the frying pan,
but it stayed together.
I’m quite sure that these
were not all Cortland apples
because I did notice
while I was cooking them
that they exuded an awful lot
of juice into the oven
even after
I had let them exude juice,
but I’m gonna take these
both into the dining room,
and we’ll look at each one.
Let’s see.
That one is hot,
and that one is…
There.
Now, everybody can get one
of each tart.
There.
There’s one of the juicy tart,
and here’s one of the more
tatin-like tart.
I think that actually makes
a more interesting dessert.
And a little bit of this lovely
crème fraîche
right in the middle.
There.
And I think…
As a matter of fact, I think
when you’re doing this yourself,
as an experiment, you should do
both mushy apples
and other apples, and with it,
to show your triumph,
you could serve
a sparkling Vouvray.
I think it’s nice to serve
a Vouvray
rather than all the time
Champagne,
and when you’re serving a tart
with tatin…
Bon appétit.
And that’s all for today
on "The French Chef."
This is Julia Child.
♪♪
-"The French Chef"
has been made possible
by a grant
from the Polaroid Corporation.
♪♪
Julia Child is coauthor
of "Mastering the Art
of French Cooking,"
volumes 1 and 2.
♪♪