My neighbour Angel gave me a bag of rosy red apples from her garden other day. Their flesh is pink, as if the deep red skin had leached into the flesh. I think they’re Discovery.
A really useful book when you have a glut of apples is The Apple Source Book. It’s where I found this lovely tart recipe by my colleague in the Guild of Food Writers, Lindsey Bareham. She grew up in Kent surrounded by orchards, so she knows her apples.
The tart turned out just as she describes: “thinly sliced apple ‘halves’ poking through golden frangipane”. We ate it for Sunday lunch after our mains of roast lamb and Ben Cox’s prize winning Yorkshire pudding recipe…Result.
Apple Frangipane Tart
Serves 6-8
200g SR flour, plus extra for dusting
200g soft butter plus extra for greasing
100g of caster sugar, plus 1 tbsp
2 large eggs
100g ground almonds
1 tbsp finely chopped lemon zest
4 Discovery, Worcester Pearmain or other soft eating apples
1 tbsp smooth apricot jam
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 45 minutes plus 15 minutes resting
Method
Sift the flour into a bowl and dice 100g of the butter directly into it.
Add a pinch of salt and, using your fingertips, quickly rub the butter into the flour until it resembles heavy breadcrumbs.
Using a knife, stir in 1-3 tablespoons of water a little at a time, until the dough seems to want to cling together. Knead lightly to make a ball dusting with extra flour if it seems too wet. Chill for 30 minutes before rolling.
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 5.
Generously butter a 24cm flan tin with removable base and dust with flour, shaking away the excess. This make it reliably non-stick. Roll the pastry to fit and trim the edge. Cover loosely with foil and half fill with dried beans to stop the pastry rising. Bake for 10 minutes, carefully remove the foil and bake for a further 5 minutes.
Meanwhile beat together 100g each of butter and sugar, preferably in an electric mixer, until light and fluffy. Beat in one egg at a time. Fold in the almonds and lemon zest, then carefully tip the mixture into the hot pastry case.
Halve and peel the apples, then carefully cut out the cores. Place flat side down and slice thinly across the width. ‘Plant’ the apple ‘halves’, spreading them out slightly, rounded side uppermost, towards the edge of the pastry case with the last one in the middle.
Melt a knob of butter a paint the exposed apple, then dredge with the tablespoon of sugar. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the frangipane is puffy, golden and springy to the touch and the apples just cooked through. Paint the apple with the apricot jam and leave in the warm, switched-off oven with the door ajar for 15 minutes. Remove the flan tin collar and serve warm or cold.
Lindsey Bareham has written over a dozen cookery books including Roast Chicken and Other Stories with Simon Hopkinson and writes the weekday Dinner Tonight column in The Times T2. Her book, The Fish Store, is her story with recipes of the family home in Mousehole, Cornwall. Her latest book, The Big Red Book of Tomatoes, published by Grub Street is available here. www.lindseybareham.com www.thefishstore.uniquehomestays.com