TASTE
From southwest France, an extraordinary dessert
| • | For the love of chocolate |
By Leslie Brenner
Los Angeles Times
This year Santa came to me in the form of a recipe. If there had been a photograph of the dessert in "Daniel Boulud's Cafe Boulud Cookbook" — an apple and armagnac croustade — I doubt I would have attempted making it. It would have looked too complicated, something my sorry skills would probably have botched. (I can cook, but I'm no baker.) But the recipe looked easy, so I gave it a try.
The result? A dessert so beautiful, so dramatic, so different, that it's just the thing for Christmas dinner or New Year's Eve. My friend who had come to dinner gasped when I brought it to the table. I cut into it to serve it, and the tall slice — layers of crisp, delicate, caramelized phyllo (or filo), studded with sliced almonds and filled with apples cooked in armagnac — held together picture-perfectly. The texture was brilliant, the flavor wonderful. OK, so the apples weren't quite sweet or tender enough, but I could tweak the filling next time I made it.
The croustade, as I learned from the recipe's headnote, is a specialty of Gascony, but I had never seen nor tasted one — nor even heard of it — though I'd spent quite a bit of time in southwestern France. My husband, a native of the region, had heard of it but didn't know what it was. Traditionally, it's made of thin sheets of a hand-pulled, strudellike dough, but Boulud's recipe used phyllo dough.
Boulud's recipe calls for four layers of buttered, sugared sheets of phyllo, crinkled into circles, strewn with sliced almonds and stacked. On top of that go apples that have been sauteed with sugar and vanilla, then flambeed with armagnac and cooled. Another crumpled, buttered, sugared, almond-strewn phyllo sheet goes on, then another, then you bake it. Take it out of the oven, add one more crumpled layer, which you dust heavily with powdered sugar, then back in the oven it goes. When it's caramelized, shiny and golden-brown, it's done.
I was smitten. The phyllo was so easy to work with, building up layers that you could drape to beautiful effect. Later, I read the recipe again more closely and realized I hadn't quite followed the directions, which say to press the dough into the pastry ring you use as a form; "it should be fairly flat and shouldn't come up the sides of the ring," wrote Boulud and his co-author Dorie Greenspan. I had gone for height, not knowing what I was doing, and the effect was fantastic.
Another confession: I didn't have any armagnac, but I had calvados, the apple brandy from Normandy. The apple-on-apple flavor, with the burnt edge of flambe, was terrific. (The next time I made it, I sliced the apples thinner, added more sugar, and cooked a little longer.)
APPLE AND CALVADOS CROUSTADE
Melt 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Place the apple slices in a bowl. Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise in half and, using the tip of a small knife, scrape the seeds over the apples and drop the pod on top. When the butter is foamy, add the apples with the vanilla and the sugar and cook, stirring very gently but frequently, until the apples are lightly caramelized and soft, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add the calvados and, using a long match and standing well back, set it aflame. When the flames subside, turn the apples over in the calvados; when the flames have died out and the calvados has reduced to a glaze, transfer the apples to a bowl and allow them to cool to room temperature.
Center a rack in the oven and heat it to 350 degrees. Place a 10-inch tart ring on a baking sheet lined with a silicon mat or parchment. Melt the remaining 6 tablespoons butter and set it aside. Unfold the phyllo on your work surface and cover it with a damp towel.
Remove the top sheet of phyllo (re-cover the remaining sheets), brush it lightly with butter, and dust it with powdered sugar shaken from a fine-mesh strainer. Gently and loosely crumple the dough into a circle and lay it into the pastry ring. Sprinkle it with about one-fifth of the almonds. Repeat this procedure three more times, until you have four buttered, sugared and almond-sprinkled sheets of phyllo layered in the ring. Do not press them together — let them keep some height.
Spoon the apples into the center of the croustade, leaving a 1-inch border bare. Working as you did before, butter, sugar and crumple a sheet of phyllo, fitting it over the apples. Sprinkle this layer with the remaining almonds, and cover this with another crumpled sheet of buttered and sugared phyllo. Do a little styling and draping; arrange the phyllo so it looks good.
Slide the croustade into the oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, watching the top of the tart carefully to make certain it doesn't brown too much. The top should be just lightly browned. Remove the croustade from the oven.
Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Butter and sugar another sheet of phyllo, loosely crumple it and place it on the last layer to make a light, airy crown. Bake the tart for 5 to 10 minutes, or until lightly browned, then remove from the oven again.
Butter the last sheet of phyllo and, once again, crumple it to make a crown. Place it on top of the croustade and dust it heavily with the remaining powdered sugar. Return the tart to the oven and bake until the top layer caramelizes evenly, about 5 to 10 minutes. Check the progress of the sugar frequently because it can go from brown to burned in a flash. Pull the croustade from the oven as soon as the top is a golden caramel color and allow it to cool for 5 to 10 minutes.
To serve, lift off the tart ring and using two large, wide metal spatulas, transfer the croustade to a serving plate. Serve the tart warm or at room temperature the day it is made, with creme fraiche, whipped cream (or even better, creme fraiche lightened with whipped cream) or vanilla ice cream.
Total time: 1 hour, 5 minutes.
Makes 8 servings.
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