Bli's Indulgence: Sweet as Apple Pie

It's apple season here and there are plenty of fruit carts selling them in New Delhi. My favourite fruit cart (haha, yes I have a favourite!) is the one parked right outside The Mother's International School- The best school in India! Fellow ahem 'Mother's Blossoms' would agree!- So today, when i passed the cart by, I swear to God, I could smell Granny Smith Apples in the air and that made my mouth water with the tart reminder of their not so sweet flavour, which I love. I bought two kilograms of the fruit and then got a scolding from mum because, well, one her way back home, she had also bought a kilogram of apples! How was I supposed to know! ! !

And so, to cut a long story short, I decided to bake a tart. Only, I don't really like the whole process of moulding pastry into a tart pan because the fluted edges never seem to want my pastry to mould into it so I decided to give my apple tart just a base. No sides. Damn it, if anyone complains about how a tart cannot be a tart without the fluted edges, go! Shoo! This recipe isn't for you.

God, just got distracted by a few links that a friend sent me about the mentos in diet coke trick? Wait, I'll put up the youtube link here and here ... Akanksha (my sister), beware!

The Recipe

For this tart ( or, ah-hem, my version of tart with a giant shortcrust cookie base - yeah, that got your attention didn't it?) you need: A giant shortcrust cookie, filling and thin apple slices...and a few other things that I'm sure you have around the house like: Erm... Garam Masala?

Giant Shortcrust Cookie

The easiest way to make a savoury shortcrust pastry is by following this foolproof recipe of Gordon Ramsey's: 4 parts flour to 2 parts butter to 1 part water (in millilitres, not grams) and a pinch of salt. So, if you're using 400 grams of flour, you will need 200 grams of butter and 100 ml of water, and a pinch of salt. You can use a food processor and combine everything till it comes together and then you could finish forming the dough by hand. This pastry is great for chicken pot pies (I need to make that sometime), spinach and ricotta cheese pie or even for a shortcrust pizza but... do you see the theme here? It's not good for sweet pies! You need a sweet crust if you're going to put something sweet in it! Duh! Also, I like my (sweet) pastry crust flaky and buttery and I tend to not get that right texture if I add too much of water into my dough.

So, to make this shortcrust dough you need to blend 100 grams of flour, 40 grams of caster sugar, 50 grams of cold, cold butter (cut into cubes) and the tiniest pinch of salt into a food processor or a mixer and pulse till the butter is almost fully incorporated into the flour and sugar and the mixture resembles damn sand. Transfer into a bowl, add an egg yolk and a tablespoon of water, mix and form into a ball like so:

The dough may not come together easily.
Don't worry, just make a rough ball.

Chill this (wrapped in plastic wrap or in a airtight container) in the fridge for an hour to relax and harden the dough.

The Filling

I love cinnamon, cloves and star anise. It reminds me of Christmas. Okay, not Christmas per se because well, I live in a household with one Hindu parent, one Buddhist parent and three (including me) very non-religious children. I guess these spices remind me of Nigella's Christmas Kitchen and of the Glasgow Christmas Market. But anyway, my point about cinnamon, cloves and star anise is that you can usually find these ground up in garam masala. So yeah, I used garam masala in my apple tart filling :)

Peel one large Granny Smith apple or any tart-ish apple you can get. Okay, you may use a red sweet apple but don't blame me when you get a tooth ache and the dentist needs to drill your tooth (which reminds me: Must make an appointment with the dentist to close that hole in my tooth - Also called as a cavity). Cut into quarters, remove the seeds and the tough non yummy inner bits and dice the apple into 1cm square bits- no need to be exact. Put this in a sauce pan on medium high heat, add a teaspoon of garam masala (or a teaspoon in total of a mixture of cinnamon powder, clove powder, star anise powder and green cardamom seeds powder), a teaspoon more of cinnamon powder and 7-9 pieces of Cashew nuts (chopped into small bits). Mix and add half a cup of water and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Stir till the sugar dissolves, turn the heat on low and let the water evaporate completely while stirring occasionally. Keep aside to cool for a bit.

The Apple Tart filling.

Apple Slices

Peel another Granny Smith apple, core the apple and quarter the apple. Now, using a Mandoline slicer, slice the apples into thin strips. If you don't have a slicer, use a knife, pretend you're Martha Stewart and slice the apples into fine wedges.

Cut apples tend to brown very fast if left in the open air so
make sure you do this part when the cookie is baking in the oven

Assembling the Tart

While the apple filling is cooling, preheat the oven to 200C, take the dough out of the fridge and place in on a cookie sheet or on a oven proof sheet covered with aluminium foil and, using the base of your hands, flatten into a rough circle with a diameter of 8-9 inches.

Prick the pastry a few times with a toothpick (so that the pastry doesn't puff up) and bake at 200C for 10 minutes or until the edges just start to turn brown.

When the pastry starts to brown on the edges, take it out...