#WHICH ARE TART APPLES MOVIE#

I then made four more without her and all except the one I made with what turned out to be the wrong apples, looked exactly like hers. So, this fall, I asked her to come to my place this time, I took 200 pictures and almost as many notes. I thought it would fill me with the confidence I needed to replicate it at home. I invited myself over and watched her make one in her tiny kitchen, not even breaking a sweat, and it was perfect.

#WHICH ARE TART APPLES MOVIE#

She explains “It was a quick shot, but I worked hard to get the right look and technique, so I could make it over and over again, and have it look exactly the same each time, which is essential for a movie scene.” It was on the latter project that she got very, very good at apple tarte tatins. Her name is Susan Spungen and she’s a cookbook author and food stylist and whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably admired her behind-the-scenes handiwork on movies - see: that croissant scene in It’s Complicated, oh and everything Amy Adams and Meryl Streep cooked in Julie & Julia. And I had a feeling I knew who had cooked/styled it - my across-the-street neighbor. I’d begrudgingly resigned myself a life of tatin mediocrity when I spotted one of the most stunning ones I’d seen to date on a magazine stand. I mean, just look at them - too thin, too sparse, too pale, apples either under- or overcooked, and way too many apples have dissolved long before the cooking time should have been up, despite being “good baking apples.” I love it enough that I’ve written about it twice (!) in eleven years but my efforts were… mediocre at best. If you’re lucky, the apples will taste like they drank a cup of caramel and then napped in what they couldn’t finish. When made well, this upside-down apple tart looks like snug copper cobblestones on top of a rippling puff of flaky pastry. I don’t need all recipes to have 5- or 10- or fewer ingredients - I fare poorly under arbitrarily restrictive confines - but doesn’t it just blow your mind that you can make the apple tarte tatin above with only apples, sugar, butter, lemon juice, and a sheet of defrosted puffed pastry? Almost without fail, the more bafflingly short an ingredient list and the more stunningly delicious the outcome, the more likely it is to rivet me.

Which are tart apples