A Classic Pear Tart

The Bosc pears were just so perfect this week ... and pears will be gone for the summer very soon. My sweetheart has not had much in the way of sweet treats of late, so I made him a tart ... a classic French pear tart.

I started out by making Pâte Sucrée (read schmancy French pie crust) and an almond cream (a sugary, gooey almond and egg paste that has a wallop of Cognac for good measure), and poached Bosc pears ... you know how the French can drag everything out. Three recipes in one killer tart. Let's leave it at that.

Don't even think that that's dirt on those pretty pears! It's the specks of vanilla seeds clinging to the fruit after they simmered in a simple sugar syrup for twenty minutes ... someone please tell me what kind of a cocktail I can make with the leftover pear and lemon and vanilla -infused syrup! It's just too good to toss out!

Pretty little pear fans got placed over that almond paste and then more almond paste gets plopped strategically. It was at this point that I stopped to oogle how pretty the whole tart was and really notice the different textures in that tart pan. Then, I dabbed a finger in the bowl of almond paste and had a little bit of a sugar fix ... sooo good. By the time I got done licking my fingers, the oven was up to temperature.

Twenty-five minutes later, I hit the broiler setting and watched the tart like a hawk to get a 'just right' golden crust. SB will be a happy man at tea time ... don't you think?

That Amanda Hesser sure can translate a classic French recipe ... I have been enthralled with her memoir/cookbook over the past few months. I discovered her when my daughter gave me the link to Hesser's Food 52 website/blog. Then, I received the Food 52 Cookbook for Christmas. To top it off, Amanda was marked as one of the 50 Woman Game Changers that Gourmet on-line highlighted and I ended up doing even more research on her ... she's a phenom, that's for sure.

Pear and Almond Tart ... page 429 in The Cook and The Gardener ... get it. Read it and enjoy the richness of the recipes.