High from the success of my Quiche Lorraine, I decided to make the Apple Tart in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This is a thick applesauce, in a short paste crust, topped with thinly sliced apples. This turned out to be one of the most catastrophic cooking experiences of my entire life.

The first part is easy. You mix together a pate sucree in the food processor, and then put it in the freezer. I completed this step, and then realized that the amount of dough I had produced would not be enough for the recipe I was using. I quickly made some additional dough and bundled it all into the freezer to cool. Whew, crisis averted!

I went to purchase apples during the cooling process. Because, you know, apple tarts generally require apples. Julia calls for Golden Delicious, and I obediently purchased those. I was surprised; I thought they were primarily an eating apple, but they held up to the cooking very nicely.

Next step: Roll out the crust, put it in the tart pan, fill it with foil and lentils and partially bake. Done, done, done, done... whoops! Taking out the lentils, I spilled a few into the bottom f othe crust. Well, no big, right? You just brush them out, a little bit at a time....

Here, my friends, is where true catastrophe struck. As I tilted the partially baked crush to better remove the meager spoonsful of lentils that remained, the crust collapsed in on itself into an irreversably gooey, buttery mess of half-baked dough. Half-baked, lentil-filled dough, I might add. My kitchen was filled with smoke from burning butter dripped out the bottom of the tart mold, where I had neglected to place a baking sheet. Woe, woe! There was no use; the tart was done for. I wailed and gnashed my teeth.

Well...but I did still have a bit of the unbaked dough left over, so I only needed to whip up an additional half a batch to start over. But the food processor was already in the dishwasher, which was already running. I continued slicing apples.

It is at this point that my dinner guests arrived. Erica volunteered as my sous chef, in order to expedite the tart preparation; after all, with so many apples already sliced, it was far too late to turn back.

We retrieved the food processor, and made our next hoorendous dicovery: I was out of white flour. I had only a meager amount of whole wheat flour remaining. What to do? Well, prepare a whole-wheat crust, apparently, and hope to mash to two types of dough into an indistinguishable mass during the pre-baking.

Erica peeled and chopped apples until we had enough for the next step: making applesauce. The apples cooked. And cooked. And cooked. Fifteen minutes into the twenty minute cooking time, Erica gently pointed out to me, "It says it should be covered." I covered the pot. Suddenly, the apples simmered themselves into tenderness.

We tossed in apricot preserves, sugar, vanilla, and orange zest, and reapplied the cover. Then we went outside to eat our burgers and potato salad. I sternly told myself to remember to go inside to stir the apple mixture. This did not happen.

Twenty minutes later, I leap to my feet and race isndie to stir. But alas, too late... or was it? The applesauce had certainly burned, leaving a black crust at the bottom of my pot. But serendipity struck this time, and not disaster, because with the burning came... caramelization. Yes, we had produced a lovely caramel appleasauce. Mmmmmmmm.

Now for round two of Andrea v. Pate Sucree. I took out my piebald pie doughs, and rolled them out. The white crust behaved itself beautifully. It was pliable. It did not stick. The wheat crust, though, was not yet cold enough. It stuck to the rolling pin and to the counter; it tore and squished; in general, it did not behave like a well-brought-up tart dough should. Finally, when nobody was looking, I threw the dough into the pan and molded it to shape with my thumbs, squishing the whole wheat dough up the sides to get it to roughly the right fit. I reapplied the foil and lentils and prebaked, again.

This time, the delentiling process was successful. We hurriedly added the applesauce, then beautified the tart with the apple slices, then flung the whole thing into the oven like some sort of adder.

The tart baked uneventfully.

You are supposed to apply an apricot glaze to the top of the apple, but I chose to leave well enough alone, and did not go on to that step. I unmolded the tart, and it was beautiful.

And it was delicious.

And I'm putting Julia Child away for a while.

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