If you told me twenty years ago, when I first started cooking, that one day I would be able to spontaneously whip up a French apple tart, I would have balked. “What am I? A French grandmother?” But that was before I knew how to pinch together a pie dough in a matter of minutes, how to peel and slice apples quicker than a Top Chef contestant, and how to have everything cleaned up and put away more efficiently than Mary Poppins.