TWD: French Pear Tart

My dad has a hard time following recipes and  his kitchen mantra is "a recipe is only a guide." Why does this matter?  This week's TWD is French Pear Tart, a recipe chosen by none other than Dorie Greenspan herself, and it's also the last thing that I made in Houston, the swan song of my holiday baking.  So, as I was in the process of making this lovely tart, my dad walked through the kitchen and said something to the effect that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. What did he mean?  Well, a recipe is, after all my dear, only a guide and I can see that the recipe is for French PEAR tart and you just poached apples.  Diverge from the recipe, pas moi!  And so I read to him Dorie's hints for playing around, which included a substitution of apples for pears. But, really, this apple doesn't fall far from the tree because I'm afraid that I did indeed stray from Dorie's instructions, far past my substitution of apples for pears.

First things first:  I really meant to make this recipe exactly as it was written for no other reason than it looks just fantastic.  The pears were an added bonus because my parents always receive at least a couple of boxes of Harry & David Royal Riviera Pears during the holidays and what a fantastic way to use them up.  But, those pears were long gone by the time I made this tart but the fruit basket was overflowing with apples.  It seemed like such a shame to go to the store and buy more pears when apples were abundant; so, apples it was.  I decided to poach the apples because I was worried about them making the tart watery if I used them without precooking them beforehand.  So, I poached the apples in the simple syrup that the recipe calls for but I added a good wallop of apple pie spice and some vanilla extract for good measure.  It just added a hint of spicy sweetness to the apples and I don't think that the apples competed with the almond cream or the crust, thank goodness.  In retrospect I think that could have been

 a huge mistake if I'd made the apple pie spice too strong.  

On to the crust.  Dorie writes that you can use either plain sweet tart dough or sweet tart dough with nuts.  As I was already going alternative this week, the tart dough with nuts was really calling out to me.  But, which nuts to use?  We had pistachios and walnuts in abundance and both of them are listed as options.  I stood in the kitchen for a good 10 minutes pondering this decision.  As I was getting ready to pour the pistachios in the food processor, I put them up thinking that walnuts have a better flavor with apples.  Then, just as abruptly, I decided that it had to be pistachios.  I just love the green color and their flavor.  The crust came together quite nicely and I patted it into my tart pan.  I think that I was so busy contemplating all of these options that I didn't, even for a moment, stop to ponder the size of the pan.  OOPS!  I didn't even think about it until I read the P&Q today.  Honestly, I just grabbed the tart pan -- I'm pretty sure that it's at least 10" though (maybe a little bigger?).  It was a very hot and humid day in Houston the day that I made this and I think I was a little heavy handed with the dough as the heat made the dough harder to work with, a big no-no.  I froze the crust and pre-baked it and much to my everlasting delight, it didn't shrink.  I was already in love with this tart and I hadn't even tasted it.  

But here's where I hit another dilemma:  I had about 1/4 c of finely ground pistachios left and the only almonds in the house weren't blanched.  So, you guessed it, my almond cream is really almond-pistachio cream and it has brown and green flecks.  But that's ok, I think that those little flecks add character!  I will admit to being confused about the arrangement of the fruit slices -- be it pear, apple, or peach, so I just arranged mine in rows.  But I know that I must have used a large tart pan because I didn't have any issues with filling overflowing.  The apples covered most of the almond cream but it did peak up around them.  I baked it for the full hour, neurotically checking the progress every 5 minutes after the first 30 minutes.  Thank goodness for oven lights.  I don't have one in D.C. so I just sort of set the timer and leave.  My tart crust didn't burn but it got awfully close.  I think another 5-10 minutes and there would have been a definite charr flavor.  

So, if anyone has gotten to the bottom of this post and cares to know, I'm convinced that this is a terrific recipe because even with all of my fiddling, the tart was sublime.  It was sweet, but not too sweet, the almond cream is delicious, the crust was perfect (in spite of my heavy hands), and the apples worked really well in the tart.  I'll definitely make it again with pears and I'm very excited to try it with peaches in the summer.  

Special thanks to Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking From My Home to Yours for choosing this week's recipe.