Miso Caramel Tarte Tatin with Black Sesame Pastry
Our kitchen took the most French of upside-down tarts and gave it a Japanese pantry: white miso in the caramel, black sesame in the pastry, and a finishing salt of toasted nori. The result is a tatin that tastes like it was always meant to be this way.
- 6 firm apples (Braeburn or Granny Smith), peeled, halved and cored
- 150 g caster sugar
- 60 g unsalted butter, cubed
- 2 tablespoons white (shiro) miso
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- For the pastry: 200 g plain flour
- 40 g black sesame seeds, coarsely ground
- 50 g icing sugar
- 120 g cold butter, cubed
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tablespoons cold water
- For the nori salt: 1 sheet toasted nori, 1 teaspoon flaky sea salt
- Make the pastry: rub the flour, ground sesame, icing sugar and butter to coarse crumbs, add the yolk and water, bring together, wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
- Heat the oven to 200 C. In a 24 cm ovenproof frying pan, melt the sugar over medium heat without stirring until it turns deep amber.
- Add the butter and whisk until smooth, then whisk in the miso and lemon juice. It will foam and darken slightly; take it off the heat.
- Arrange the apple halves cut side up, packed tightly, over the caramel. Return to medium heat for 8 minutes so the apples start to soften and release juice.
- Roll the pastry to a circle slightly larger than the pan, lay it over the apples and tuck the edges down inside the pan.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until the pastry is dark golden and crisp. Rest 5 minutes, then invert onto a plate in one confident movement.
- Grind the nori with the salt and scatter a pinch over the warm apples. Serve with crème fraîche.
The tarte tatin is a happy accident of the Loire, a tart baked upside down so the apples cook in their own caramel before the pastry ever meets them. It is one of the few desserts that improves with a little roughness: burnt edges, a leaking corner, apples that have collapsed into each other. Our kitchen wanted to know what happens when you replace the butter-and-sugar caramel that defines it with something that carries salt, depth and a savoury edge. The answer was miso.
White miso, the mild and sweet shiro variety, dissolves into a hot caramel without curdling if you whisk it in after the sugar has taken colour and the butter has gone in. It rounds the caramel the way a pinch of salt would, but it also adds the fermented, almost cheesy note that makes people ask what the secret ingredient is. Against sharp apples it behaves like a very good salted butter caramel that has been to Kyoto.
Why black sesame in the pastry
A classic tatin uses puff or a rough shortcrust. We wanted a pastry that could stand up to the miso and echo the toasted notes in the caramel. Black sesame seeds, ground coarsely and folded into a sweet shortcrust, give the base a grey speckle, a nutty perfume and a faint bitterness that keeps the whole tart from tipping into sweetness. It also bakes crisper than a plain shortcrust because the sesame oil in the seeds fries the crumb from within.
The apples and the finishing salt
Use a firm, acidic apple that holds its shape: Braeburn, Granny Smith or a Japanese Fuji if you want a rounder sweetness. Cut them in thick halves rather than slices so they roast instead of stew. At the table, finish the tart with a pinch of nori salt, made by grinding a toasted sheet of nori with flaky sea salt. It tastes of the sea for exactly one second before the caramel takes over, which is the point.
Serve warm, never hot, with a spoon of cold crème fraîche or, if you want to follow the Japanese thread to its end, a scoop of black sesame ice cream. Leftovers are excellent for breakfast, cold, standing in the kitchen.