Miles New
- Serves:6
- Preparation time:20 minutes
- Cooking time:35-45 minutes
Ingredients
- 375 g pack of ready-rolled dessert pastry or 500 g pack of shortcrust pastry
- 100 g soft butter
- 100 g caster sugar
- 100 g round almonds
- 3 tbsp plain flour, plus a little extra for dusting
- 1 medium egg
- 1 tbsp amaretto liqueur
- 411 g tin of pear halves, or 4 very ripe soft pears
- 250 g tub of mascarpone
- 1 stem ginger ball (the type in syrup)
- ½ vanilla pod (or a couple of drops of vanilla extract)
- 50 g icing sugar
- Small handful of fresh mint
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C / Gas Mark 4.
- Unravel the ready-rolled pastry and use it to line a flan tin. Roll it out a touch more, if necessary, to fit in perfectly. If using a block of pastry, then roll out to just bigger than the tin on a floured surface and use in the same way. Either way, be really careful to not stretch the pastry or pull it, as this will make it shrink in the tin when it cooks.
- Try and get the pastry right into the fluted edges of the tin. You can use a wooden spoon handle dipped in some flour to ease the pastry into the ‘flutes’. Cut off the excess pastry with a sharp knife and then sit the tin on a baking sheet and pop in the fridge to harden up a bit while you prepare the filling.
- Mix the butter and sugar together in a medium bowl either by hand or using a hand-held electric whisk (or in a freestanding electric mixer) until it is really soft and well combined. Then beat in the ground almonds and plain flour. Crack the egg in, add the amaretto liqueur, and then beat it hard so everything is combined. Remove the lined tin from the fridge and add the almond filling, spreading it out evenly so it is nice and smooth on top.
- Drain the tinned pears well in a colander and then on kitchen paper. Or peel, halve and decore the fresh pears, if using.
- Arrange the pear halves, cut side down, in the almond filling. If you lay the tin running from left to right in front of you, then lay a pear half in pointing away from you, then the next one pointing towards you and so on, so they are in an alternating pattern and all fit in perfectly.
- Bake in the oven for 35-45 minutes or until the filling is nicely puffed up and golden.
- About five minutes before the tart is ready, put the mascarpone in a small bowl. Finely chop the stem ginger, split the vanilla pod open and scrape out the seeds and add them (or the vanilla extract, if using) to the bowl. Sift the icing sugar in and then stir everything together gently. Just give it a few stirs or otherwise the mascarpone may split and go grainy. Set aside for serving.
- Check the tart is cooked. The pastry will be crisp and golden and the almond filling should have puffed up a little around the pears and be golden brown and spongy. Stick a skewer or point of a sharp knife into the centre of the filling to check it is done. It will be just a little damp from the moisture of the pears, but shouldn’t be really wet like the original raw mixture.
- Once cooked, remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before carefully removing it from the tin. Then simply slide the tart off the base onto a long serving platter.
- To decorate, hold the base of the tin quite close to the tart to cover all but about 2cm of one of the long edges. Then dust half of the icing sugar over through a fine sieve. Repeat with the other long edge. Sprinkle over some picked mint leaves and serve warm with the ginger mascarpone cream. This is also really good served cold.
No comments:
Post a Comment