Tarte Fine

My very big news is that I met Dorie this past Sunday!  My husband and I drove from Rochester, NY to Kingston, ON where Dorie was featured at a brunch at the Waterfront Holiday Inn.  We got there very early after driving part of the way the day before and spending the night in Alexandria Bay, NY.  It was a thrill to see Dorie walking down the hall with a big smile on her face.  When she got near me, she exclaimed, "You're Peggy the Baker!"  I was so excited!  Dorie really believes that the Tuesdays with Dorie crowd is a community of friends and she seemed almost as excited to meet me as I was to meet her.

The event included wonderful food prepared from recipes from Around my French Table and a terrific interview of Dorie by noted Canadian food critic James Chatto.  It was an absolutely fabulous time; if any of you can get to see her at one of her book tour events, drop everything and go!  And take your butter-stained copy of Baking from My Home to Yours with you!

Here's a picture of me with Dorie and my husband Rich.

And now to this week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick!  It was chosen by Leslie of Lethally Delicious.  This was truly an easy dessert to make.  The base is frozen puff pastry and Dorie recommends trying hard to find the all butter kind rather than use the Pepperidge Farm brand.  When I last looked, the only brand available was Pepperidge Farm so I was alarmed when that section of the frozen food case was completely empty.  Tucked off to the side, however, was the store brand puff pastry sheet and lo and behold, it is made solely with butter!  Thank you Wegmans!

The next challenge was to find the right kind of apples.  Apple season is just beginning here in upstate New York and we have many varieties from which to choose.  The only Golden Delicious, however, were from 3,000 miles away so I opted to use local Empires that had just been delivered today.

I love the way Dorie describes exactly how thin to slice the apples:  7 slices per quarter of the apple.  And I love the way that in making the slices that way I ended up with precisely the correct amount of apples to cover the puff pastry!  

I almost skipped the glaze but remembered some homemade spiced pear jam my friends Rebecca and Tony gave me for my birthday.  Was that ever a good idea! 

Dorie recommends serving this within an hour of when it comes out of the oven.  Ours was served and consumed within about 5 minutes.  Very yummy indeed!