Tiny pears for a galette a deux
Ever since I learned from Dorie Greenspan that even the top French pastry shops usually use canned pears in their pear tarts I’ve been experimenting with various brands, and, to my amazement, all have worked splendidly.
When I found this jar of mini-pears I knew they’d look cute in a small galette and thought they’d be quick and easy to core. Cute, yes. Quick to core? Hell, no. I’d thought the cores would be nearly non-existent, like the barely developed fuzzy centers of baby artichokes. So wrong. These small pears had sizable and sturdy centers that had me cursing softly by the time I’d wrested them all free.
But nestled into a bed of almond frangipane they did make an attractive and tasty little tart. So I’m grateful to those two uber-bloggers: Dorie and Pim — the first for the info about using canned pears and the latter for the suggestion to freeze frangipane in tart-sized portions, ready to enrich all sorts of fruits. But the next time I make a pear pie of any size I’ll stick to fruit of conventional dimensions.
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 11:54 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 24th, 2010 at 10:21 am
I think this sounds fab, Casey. I have had exactly the same frustrating experience with baby avocados: the pits are nearly always just the same size as in regular avocados, making them much less fleshly, and it’s just as perilous to remove the pit from a small avocado as a large one!
March 11th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Canned pears for tarts? Bless you Casey, I appreciate knowing this important time saver!