The market-stall selling quinces had a lovely recipe for poached quinces. I first tried this out, and we had lovely quince dessert for quite some days. Quinces taste very nicely sweet-tart, or as someone described poetically “a beautiful old-fashioned flavour”.
Then I thought for a while what to bake the quinces into. I’ve done quince muffins, which was easy and lovely, but suddenly I was hit by pure brilliance… Quince tarte Tatin. All the more challenging because I’ve never made a normal (apple) tarte tatin before, and because my French colleague Olivier was going to bake something as well, so I would have to compete with a real French cake. (Luckily he’d told me his project was highly likely to fail miserably, so I didn’t feel too threatened).
First step was to do a bit of research on the tarte Tatin. I’m a scientist after all. Two sisters were baking apple pie for their restaurant, but something went wrong and they ended up putting the apple in a new oven dish, covering it with pastry and baking that, turning the cake around on a plate afterwards. They were called Tatin, and after the restarant guests approved of the tarte, they kept making it. And the restaurant stil exists.
Most English recipes for Tarte Tatin follow these lines: pour some caramel into a baking dish, cut apples and arrange them in the dish, cover with puff pastry and bake. But to me, that sounded too easy, and not enough purely French. So I went to a French website and was finally satisfied, because they give the recipe for a “pâte brisée”, which is a firmer crumbly pie dough and seemed much more original to me. Although the website also acknowledged there are two strong camps out there, the puff pastry camp and the crumbly dough camp.
The French website was very French indeed in that some key processes of the recipe were not explained, possibly every French baker is born with the knowledge of how to turn “some sugar and a bit of water” into caramel, and possibly everyone knows for how long at what temperature to bake a tarte in the oven. Perhaps it was my deep immersion in the French “cabane” during my PhD, but I managed to bake one magnificent tarte, if I may say so humbly.
But it was easier said than done. It took me three days. But three days of tantalizing sweet smells lingering in the house is not a punishment.
We’re getting to the actual recipe(s) now, so get your baking gear out and wait for autumn to ripen your quinces over there in the Northern hemisphere.
First step is to poach the quinces to make them soft and infuse them with some sugar and spices.
Peel your quinces. I used around 10 in total, but only 2.5 for the tarte. However, if you are going through the trouble, better to make a quince feast of it. Cut them in quarters and remove the core, preferably without cutting your fingers.
Put two liters of water with around 600g of sugar in a slow cooker, or in an ovendish in the oven. Most recipes call for more sugar, but I found this sweet enough.
Add 2 cinnamon sticks and a teaspoon of cloves and the quinces.
Bring to a boil and simmer this for at least 3 hours, or overnight, but basically until the quinces changed colour from yellow to pink. Also take care the quinces don’t get too soft, it’s fine for eating, but a bit of a pain for the tarte-process, you don’t want them to fall apart when you touch them.
For the tarte:
The dough, la pâte brisée :
200g flour
100 butter in small pieces
50 g warm milk
1 pinch of salt
General warning: don’t work your dough too much!
Mix flour, butter and salt until it feels sandy.
Add the milk and knead into a homogenous ball, place this in the fridge in plastic wrap for 30 minutes.
Caramel (wet)
100g sugar
50 ml water
Put the water into a heavy-based, deep saucepan, preferably stainless steel as this will allow you to see the colour changes in the caramel. Sprinkle in the sugar and, over a low heat, slowly dissolve the sugar, stirring occasionally. It is important to dissolve the sugar completely, as once the syrup starts to boil any sugar crystals can turn the caramel grainy. Use a wet pastry brush to brush any crystals from the sides of the pan.
Increase the heat and bring the syrup to a simmer.
Continue to simmer briskly and after around 15 minutes the syrup will start to colour.
Swirl the pan occasionally to ensure an even colour, but don't stir. Once it is a deep amber (4-5 minutes more), take off the heat and immediately place the base of the pan in a cold-water bath to stop the caramel cooking (it will hiss).
Now, finally, the actual tarte.
2 to 3 poached quinces (depending on size, you need enough to completely cover the pie-form), cut into relatively thick slices
sugar
butter
the dough
caramel, cooled
In a frying pan melt some butter with a similar amount of sugar and bake the quinces for approximately 15 minutes without stirring, but taking care they don’t burn. If they start sticking to the pan, add more butter. Do this until all the quinces are fried in butter and sugar.
Preheat the oven to 180C
Grease a 26 cm pie-form with butter
Pour the slightly cooled caramel into the form
Arrange the quinces in circles in the form
Roll out the dough into a round flap large enough to cover the quinces completely (yep, 26 cm to fit the form)
Drape the dough over the quinces
Prick with a fork several times so it doesn’t form bubbles during baking
Bake 30 minutes
Let it cool slightly, then cover with a plate and turn upside down, voila the quinces are now on top!
Serve warm, as it is or with (ice) cream
