Dim Sum Sunday - Heart Healthy

It's hard to ignore the headlines of rising rates of diabetes and heart disease in America. Our aging population has partied hardy on a steady diet of fat, sugar and salt. However not all is doom and gloom. Chefs and cooks are working hard to come up with healthy choices to replace
our favorite foodie vices. When I went looking for a dish that was heart healthy, I was looking for something that was simple, seasonal and hopefully, tasty. I ended up choosing David Liebovitz's Low Fat Tarte Tatin (oddly enough which not found at his website). Basically it's a single crust apple pie. There's a great video of Julia Child making one back on 1971 (bless you PBS). Let's just say there's no holding back on the butter with this dish.That's a stick of butter she's slathering the pan with, roughly 92 grams of fat. While quite yummy and decadent not exactly the heart healthy dish we're looking for. The recipe I'm following only uses one tablespoon of butter to caramelize the apples. Combined with the thinner top/bottom crust helps bring this down to a much healthier level. First you make and chill your crust. Then you peel, core and quarter your apples. Melt the butter in a 10 inch iron skillet and combine with 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Wedge in your cut apples in a concentric circles in your skillet and then cook for 20 - 25 minutes on the stove top. Once the apples have cooked down a bit you place the crust over your apples, tucking under the edges. It goes into a 400 degree oven until the crust is golden.

As you can see my skillet is more of a dutch oven but it still works. I just made sure I used a springform pan bottom to help me in my flip maneuver.

Sadly I cooked my apples too long and burned the center but since you're not supposed to disturb the apples while they cook, I'm going to need a little more tart making experience to know when the best time to stop the cooking process.

You can see by the edges ideally what you want, that golden color while the apples still hold their form and not drown thin crispy crust with apple juice.

As long as I avoid the really burned parts, still not bad and something I would try again especially with the wonderful apples that are currently in season.