C’est pas évident

One of my favorite expressions in French is “ce n’est pas évident,” something that is almost exclusively used in spoken French, and so it almost always comes out as “c’est pas evident.”

Evident means obvious in French, but when used in the negative, like many of my favorite expressions in French, it can take on a myriad of definitions, none of which is easy to categorically translate. (C’est pas évident… it’s not straightforward.)

C’est pas évident, in general, to find something that a large group of teenage girls will all be interested in.

C’est pas évident to find 12 jobs so that all of them can help in the kitchen when you realize that all it took was making Tarte Tatin.

C’est pas évident that, when making said Tarte Tatin, a store-bought puff pastry crust would work just as well as a homemade one.

C’est pas évident to flip the finished Tarte Tatin when all of the plates in the house are smaller than the tart pans you used.

C’est pas évident that the grown man you ask to help you will scream like a little girl when flipping the Tarte Tatin onto a glass cake plate you finally found that is, in fact, big enough to hold the final tart.

C’est pas évident, when you see 12 skinny little girls get off a plane, that they will each be able to put away more than the four growing boys you had last year combined.

Tarte Tatin

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.