Jackson Boxer's roast apples with toffee sauce, no pastry required
The London chef strips tarte tatin back to butter, sugar and fruit, with soured cream and walnuts, for a warming Bonfire Night pudding.
Tarte tatin is a lovely thing, but it hides its work. According to Jackson Boxer, writing in The Guardian, the caramelisation happens behind a screen of puff pastry, so getting it right blind takes a great deal of practice and repetition.
His solution is to drop the pastry altogether. The result, a pan of roast apples with toffee sauce and soured cream, is pitched as autumn on a plate: something to come home to after the fireworks.
Why it works
Boxer describes the logic as the tarte tatin method without the pastry, and without the need to turn out a pan of seething caramel at significant danger to the skin on your wrists. The butter and sugar, in the presence of the apples, make a slightly acidic toffee sauce, while the fruit keeps enough bite to avoid disintegrating into mush.
The one bit of forward planning is drying the quartered apples in the fridge first. Boxer says this gives an even caramelisation of the sugar and helps the fruit keep its shape. Short of time? You can dry them in an oven set to 80C (60C fan)/gas very low for 30 minutes instead.
He also suggests the dish is delicious cooked over a bonfire for the intrepid, where the smoke adds an incredible extra dimension.
What you need
Serves four. Prep 5 minutes, drying 2 hours, cooking 45 minutes.
- 6 apples (braeburn or discovery, for preference)
- 100g unsalted butter, softened
- 100g caster sugar
- 500g soured cream, to serve
- A few pinches of ground cinnamon, to serve
- 100g toasted walnuts, to serve
How it goes
Peel the apples, halve them, then quarter them and cut out the cores. Leave the pieces uncovered on a tray in the fridge for two hours.
Heat the oven to 210C (190C fan)/410F/gas 6½. Press the butter over the base of an ovenproof nonstick pan so it covers the whole flat surface, then scatter the sugar evenly over the top.
Arrange the apples cut-side up on top. Boxer likes to shape them into a fan. Put the pan over a medium heat for five to 10 minutes to melt the butter and caramelise the sugar, shaking the pan gently every few minutes, until the sugar has become a dark caramel.
Transfer to the oven and bake for 30 minutes, until everything is brown and bubbling. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then divide between warmed bowls. Finish with a generous spoon of soured cream, a dusting of cinnamon and the toasted walnuts.
The cook
Boxer is chef and owner of Brunswick House, Vesper and Dove, all in London, and culinary director of Cowley Manor near Cheltenham and the Henrietta in London, according to The Guardian.
His point about tarte tatin is a fair one: the sugar should be dark and bittersweet, tempered by the acidity of the apples. Here you can watch it happen, which is rather the appeal.
Sources: The Guardian
