I experienced serious fruit tree envy recently when visiting Kenton Hall in Suffolk, home of the McVeigh family and their longhorn cattle. It’s also home to Aunt Paddy and Uncle Howard, possessors of a lovingly-tended kitchen garden and crucially, of three or four espaliered apricots. Howard is rightly proud of them and says they produce a good crop of fine-flavoured fruit.
We grow a lot of fruit but we don’t have any apricots, so I was well jell, as my nieces and nephews probably wouldn’t be caught dead saying. I did, however, manage to source a few punnets in our local Co-op.
Usually I make apricots into a conserve, which is without a doubt the most popular jam in the Portly preserve cupboard. This time though I kept a few back to make this gloriously sticky tarte tatin.
I added a few chunks of preserved ginger as I like the marriage of flavours. If you don’t, just leave it out. You might like to think about sprinkling a few fresh thyme leaves over the tart instead, when it comes out of the oven. You’ll need an oven-proof frying pan or shallow casserole of around 26 cm diameter.
Apricot and Ginger Tarte Tatin
Ingredients:
10-12 fresh apricots, halved and stoned
3-4 chunks of preserved ginger, chopped
1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry
For the caramel:
100g golden caster sugar + 50ml water
50g butter, cubed
Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5.
Melt the sugar with the water over a moderate heat and cook until it forms a chestnut brown caramel. Please, please be careful around the hot caramel as the smallest speck stuck to your fingers will result in blisters. I speak from experience.
Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter. It may separate a bit but keep stirring and it will blend into a smooth creamy caramel.
Place the apricots on the caramel, cut side down, in concentric rings then put the chopped ginger (if using) into the gaps.
Cut a circle of pastry that is 2 1/2cm wider than the diameter of the pan – you may need to roll it out a little more. Drape it over the top of the fruit, tucking the edges down the sides using a wooden spoon or a spatula, so you don’t touch the caramel. Cut some slits into the pastry to let the steam escape.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 25-30 minutes until puffed and golden and bits of the caramel have bubbled up round the sides.
Using oven gloves, place a plate over the top and quickly invert the pan so the tarte tatin is now fruit-side-up on the serving plate. If any of the pieces of fruit stick to the pan, just replace them on the tart.
Allow to cool for 15-20 minutes but eat while still warm and before the juices make the pastry soggy. Good with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream.
Hi Linda, this looks wonderful, as always! I didn’t realise that Tartes Tatin (see, I got the correct plural, I knew the French degree would come in useful sometime) were cooked and baked upside down. Have tracked down a Tarte Tatin cooking pan in Bournemouth and off to get it now! Best wishes Tim
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Thank you, Tim. Hope I’m not costing you a fortune, adding to your batterie de cuisine! happy shopping.
This looks lovely. I’m jealous of your apricots – the ones here aren’t very good.
Ken
Thanks, Ken, much appreciated.
Reblogged this on A Single Serving and commented:
I’d love to get my hands on some really good apricots! The ginger with this sounds yummy!
Thank you. The good thing about this is that you can use supermarket apricots and the cooking really brings out the flavour in fruit that might taste a bit woolly if you ate it raw.
Ken is exactly right. The ones here are not so great. But what a tarte!
Thanks, Michelle. I don’t know much about the fruit available in the US although I once buy what I thought was a juicy nectarine, only to find it was a startlingly huge, hard and tasteless plum. Size and appearance seemed to have taken precedence over flavour. And I wasn’t even in Texas. (Joke, sorry, Texan friends.)