Tarte aux pommes

My brother, Sam, keeps asking me to make this dessert, even though I've never made it before. It's just that he really wants to try it but he doesn't bake. He cooks (paella, roast chicken etc) all sorts of food and he's pretty good, but he never bakes. No idea why. Anyway since we've now entered into his last week in Manchester (the secondment at the Manchester office is ending soon), I've decided to indulge him and his laziness.

I have a couple of recipes by Julia Child and Elizabeth David, but in the end I settled with one from the internet - Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour. This is a food blog written by a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. The result was pretty good and quite similar to the photo in the original blog. Although next time I'll skip the 30ml of water, the apples were juicy enough on their own. It wasn't too sweet and I just love the smell of the cinnamon sticks!

Tarte aux pommes is not difficult to make, but it does take time and effort. Peeling and slicing 6 apples (the recipe said 7 but I found 6 to be sufficient) is quite time consuming.

For lunch, I made my own version - the lazy man/woman version of chicken cacciatore. Basically, I had 3 very ripe vine tomatoes I had to get rid of, and had no onion, thyme, white wine or white wine vinegar. This is the quick and simple version -

3 large, ripe tomatoes. Blanched, skinned and diced.

3 pieces of chicken thigh

bay leaf

a few cloves of garlic, crushed

sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper

dried basil

tomato puree

olive oil

I just pan-fried the chicken thigh and garlic until it was browned on both sides, then added all the herbs, spices, tomatoes. Then I put on the lid and cooked until the chicken is thoroughly cooked and the tomatoes become a mushy paste. Voila, a very quick lunch.

Okay I know it doesn't look very appealing...