Tarte Tatin

I am–and always have been–of the school of thought that says that people don’t change.

Maybe a little bit, OK, I admit, but really, most people–and most things–don’t change all that much. When they do, it comes as a shock, at least to me.

Paziols, on the other hand, is a strange sort of organic place where everything changes and yet nothing changes all at the same time. Each time I come back to this house, I recognize everything, the past four summers blending together into a wild blur of all-nighters in the grenier and early mornings in the kitchen, long lunches on the terrace and excursions started from the garage.

I feel as though this house is mine: the blue paint I spattered all over the tiles two summers ago is still there, proof that I exist, though most of the kids have taken to telling me that this place wouldn’t exist without me, something I can’t even imagine (the program not existing or the program existing without me.)

Summers blend together through memories and photographs, though I can separate them easily if I try hard enough; trying is hardly worth it though. It doesn’t seem to matter anyway: I’ve always been here. Anne-Marie and I are the only ones who have been here all four years, and even though there are some kids and some counselors who are back again after two or three years, it’s me that people in the town recognize. “You’ve come here before… haven’t you?”

I don’t recognize most of them–after all, it’s much easier to remember someone when they invade your small town every summer with a band of rowdy Americans than it is to recognize the locals who watch you swarm down on them from afar. By chance, I finally met one of them this weekend, and he posed all the questions I was sure others had been thinking of. “What are you doing here?” “Why France?” “Wait… where are you from?”

I don’t mind answering. It may be my fourth year, but I’m always learning things about this place, and nothing ever gets old for me, even the Cathar chateaux and the prehistoric museum in Tautavel we visit every year. But maybe most of all, it’s the people who actually do come back that make this place into what it is.

This year, five of the six older girls who are campers here are returning students, one of which is my Sous-Chef from last year. She stumbled back into the kitchen as though she had never left, and though I took my time remembering where we kept the knives and which one was my favorite–after two weeks back, it seems impossible that I could have ever forgotten–she had remembered everything down to where we kept the presse-ail, and she was more than happy to watch me recreate one of the favorite desserts from last year: tarte tatin.

She’s taken a different role this year–something I didn’t expect. Instead of hanging on my coattails, she’s the one directing the younger kids, leaving me free to run around chasing boiling-over pots and burning quiches. She stands behind me calmly and explains how to wash the salad three times, where the bowls for the tomatoes are kept, how to set the table for lunch. One afternoon, when I got stuck in Perpignan for longer than expected, Anne-Marie turned to her and asked, “What’s for lunch?” I wasn’t there to witness it, but apparently, she didn’t miss a beat.

So maybe some things have changed. After all, this year, the Country Boy flung the last few slices of tarte into the circle of six grandes, who launched themselves onto them like lions and licked the plates clean.

This year it was me, and not Marc, who turned the tarte tatins out of their pans and onto the glass serving plate. This year, no one suffered sugar burns, but no one laughed at Marc screaming like a little girl either. And this year, the Sous-Chef stood calmly behind one of the other girls, explaing what to do with the seemingly endless apple slices I kept dumping into her bowl, as she created spirals in a pan of melted butter and sugar and settled back into her element.

Tarte Tatin (republished from this time last year)

2 refrigerated puff pastries
14 granny smith apples
lemon juice
1 cup butter
3 cups sugar
2 sachets vanilla sugar or 2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Core and peel the apples and slice them. Use a little bit of lemon juice to keep them from browning as you slice.

Heat the butter and sugar in two tarte tatin pans or in two skillets if you don’t have them over medium heat. Add the vanilla sugar.

When the butter and sugar are melted together, add the apple slices in swirls from the inside out. You will not use all the apples. Turn the heat down to low and cook.

As the apples begin to cook, squeeze more and more apples into the spaces that will appear between apple slices. Continue cooking until the sugar is a deep brown and all the apples have been used.

Flip the pans so that the apples are upside down into tarte pans (if you are using tarte tatin pans, skip this step).

Unroll the pastries onto the apples, pressing the sides down so that they stick. Place in the oven and cook for half an hour, or until the pastry is golden on top. Serve with crème fraîche.