Free Backstage with Julia by Nancy Verde Barr Page B

they put it on top instead and reversed the dessert after it was baked. Another version of the story says the sisters dropped the tart after it was baked and it landed upside down—a more amusing story but doubtful.
    Making the dessert calls for a number of steps—swaps in our case—and, because it was a taped segment, three backups for each swap. The first step is to melt sugar and butter in a cast-iron skillet until it turns to a bubbly brown caramel. The next step is to arrange several layers of sliced apples in a decorative pattern of concentric circles over the caramel, then cook and baste them with the caramel until the apples are soft and the juices are thick and syrupy. After a brief cooling period, on goes a circle of pie dough and the tart is baked until the crust is golden and the caramel rich and thick. Then the drama: turn the pan upside down on a large plate and lift it away to reveal buttery, caramelized apples sitting atop the crisp pastry crust.
    Tarte Tatin is not a difficult recipe to prepare in one's own kitchen, but showing all the steps in three and a half minutes was a challenge. Our calculations told us we needed ten cast-iron pans and a seeming orchard of apples.
    Early Monday morning, we all got to work on the setup for the Tuesday taping. We peeled and cut apples until our fingers ached, then sprinkled them with sugar and lemon juice so they wouldn't turn brown overnight. Then we set up the pans: a pan for Julia to show the ready caramel and how to start layering the apples (only one backup since we would have time to wash out the pan and pour in caramel if things went wrong); a pan with all the apple layers in place and cooking on the stove to show the texture of the cooked apples and perfect thickness of the caramel (three backups); a ready-cooked tart for Julia to unmold (definitely three backups in case she dropped it).
    (This is probably a good place for an aside on Julia dropping things. The truth is, she never did drop all the things people claimed they saw her drop on her shows. I've heard viewers describe in great detail how ducks, chickens, and éclairs slipped from her grasp and landed on the floor at her feet when it really was only the potato pancake that flipped from her pan to the stove. Anything else that landed on the floor she threw there on purpose.)
    We were all proud of ourselves when we arrived at the studio the next morning and examined our flotilla of pans and apples all perfectly at the ready for their audience presentation. They looked great. It would be a fabulous spot—just not that day. As we began to assign the pans to trays, Sonya came into the kitchen with the news that assassins had killed Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, in broad daylight and in front of crowds of people. The entire GMA studio and all its staff were to be turned over to the news division of ABC immediately, and we couldn't tape.
    We were all stunned at the news. And then we were in awe as a sort of controlled, practiced chaos erupted around us and several producers jumped into action to change their focus from a morning variety show to world-altering news. They hung on every phone desperately trying to contact authorities on Mideast affairs who could get to the studio as quickly as possible. ABC news anchors rushed into the studio to replace the GMA hosts.
    Julia found the news as shocking and the studio changeover as fascinating as we all did, but being the exceedingly practical person she was, she felt that such events did not mean that everything else should stop—and at that moment, everything else to her was the makings of a Tarte Tatin sitting in the ten pans around us. "Well, see if we can do it tomorrow," Julia told Sonya. "Otherwise it's an awful lot of work gone to waste."
    After several discouraging minutes of staring at all those expectant apples, we were relieved when Sonya returned with the news that we could return the next day and tape the spot. We remained