Apple Tart at Home

For breakfast (and lunch...), I noshed on a homemade apple tart, with some jasmine green tea to drink.

I baked it yesterday, just for fun. The recipe's super-easy, even though I'd never made pâte brisée before. I like that the tart doesn't contain anything else (looking at you, cinnamon) to distract from the simple apple flavor and rich, not-too-sweet crust.

The recipe calls for individual "tartelettes", and peeled apples, which I modified for prettiness. Also, remember all that lard? Perfect for adding a little extra depth to the apples. I replaced a bit of the butter with lard in cooking the apples; if you know it's there, you'll taste it, but it didn't scream PORK!

Finally, an equipment suggestion: I do not own a pizza peel, and always mourn this fact. But I don't have the space for an adequately-sized one, and it's sort of a ridiculous purchase, unless you have a wood-fired oven or something. If I'm making pizza, I heat up the pizza stone in the oven, then pull it out and build the pizza on the warm stone. With fragile tarts, I can't do that, and transferring them can be fraught with disaster. I solved this by sprinkling a wooden cutting board with cornmeal, building the tart there, and slipping it onto the pizza stone as if it were a peel.