Tarte Tatin

I've never been a huge fan of tarte tatins. I mean I thought they were nice and all, but I never really thought they were that great. This was that great!  Seriously, if restaurants made tarte tatins like this, I'd order them.

Basically a tarte tatin is an upside down apple tart made with puff pastry crust. So I'm not sure why this was so much better than I'm used to. Presumably it has something to do with the fact that we made this very traditionally and most restaurants don't--while easy, the traditional method is time consuming and does not produce a terribly elegant final product.

First you sautée halved and cored apples in a pan (they should all fit when they are squeezed in next to each other) with butter until they start to get brown, add sugar, let the sugar turn to caramel, add calvados (or another liqueur), flambée them, and let them continue to cook, cut side up, until they are soft but not fully cooked through. At this point make sure all the apples are cut side up--rounded side down--in the pan. Then put a disk of puff pastry (obviously it's better with homemade puff, but defrosted store bought would work fine) on top of the apples and tuck it down the sides a bit. Put the whole pan in the oven and bake until the pastry is cooked. Unmold it as soon as it is cool enough to work with, but before it has cooled down too much. To be sure you can get the whole thing out in one try, heat the bottom of a pan over a gas burner on medium/high for 30 seconds to a minute. With a sheet pan held to the pan flip over the pan, and voila, a tarte tatin. Just slice and serve, perhaps with vanilla ice cream. Yum!