Pear Tart

Last week the archive had a not-fundraiser (we're not allowed to ask for money, only to invite lots of big donors in the hopes that they will spontaneously pull out their pocketbooks) to celebrate the opening of our "Hail to the Chief" exhibit. We invited an Ole Miss law professor who has apparently had about three careers, one as a lawyer, one as a law professor, and another as a journalist. In addition to this busy life, he has also recently written a book called "Jefferson on Wine." In which he details Thomas Jefferson's opinions on, of all things, wine. Just in case you couldn't figure that one out for yourself. So it was a wine and cheese party, and after it was all over, there was plenty of wine and cheese left. It's not Foodways (the Southern Foodways Alliance's annual conference), so I didn't get to take home any wine, but we archive employees got to take home plenty of cheese. And fruit. There was a huge centerpiece of fruit which the caterers were just going to throw away, so we all took home as much as we could. I got a half a pineapple, ten kiwi, and about twenty pears, in addition to a handful of blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.

I still haven't figured out what to do with the kiwi, and the rest of the fruit I just cut up and ate straight, but I decided to do something with the pears. Thus, this week's kitchen experiment, the pear tart. This is what it looks like in the cookbook, Frank Stitt's Southern Table:

First I had to make the crust, chill it, roll it out, and bake it. Since I had so many pears, and Labor Day off, I made two crusts from two different recipes. The first was the crust that the cookbook called for, and the second I copied from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, right before I sent it off to Jess (at According to Lola) for her birthday. I need my own copy soon, because that book was really freaking hard to give up.

Stitt's recipe called for a savory tart crust, with an egg to hold the pastry together (kind of unusual). Madison's was a sweeter crust, no egg. I probably should have taken a picture of the dough after I rolled it out and tried to get it into the pan, because that would have been hilarious. Stitt's dough rolled out easily and stayed in one piece as I flipped it into the pan. Madison's, not so much. I think it might have been too warm in the kitchen, because even though the dough spent enough time in the fridge to get cold all the way through, the butter in the crust just fell apart when I tried to get it into the pan. So I cut it into three pieces and just mashed them together. The Stitt crust required parchment paper and dried beans to hold it down during cooking, another process I have never tried before. But no problems there. It turned out just fine. I tried that technique on Madison's crust, and half of it came off when I pulled the parchment paper out. Whoops.

Meanwhile, the recipe also called for me to poach the pears. Never poached anything before. Basically I made sugar water (you can call it simple syrup if you want to sound fancier) and simmered the pears in it for a while. It was much prettier than the crust process, and looked like this:

Eventually I had it all done, and the first half of the process looked like this:

That's the Stitt crist in the round pan, and the Madison one in the rectangular one. Amazingly I have a roommate that owns more than one tart/pie pan, which is lucky, because I don't own any.

And that was my Monday. Fast-forward to Wednesday, and various friends from the history grad program are coming over for dinner. I have (perhaps rashly) promised to make the tarts (because why make so much if you don't have anyone to eat it?) and curry for dinner. The curry I have made many times before, fortunately, so that wasn't hard to put together.

The tarts still needed filling, so I threw some of that together, though I was missing "finely ground almonds" so I tried to compensate with more all-purpose flour. I put it all together in the pans, and it turned out like this:

That's the curry on the right, which you can't see very well, but I promise is delicious. If you like curry. And here is a close-up of the round tart:

The filling puffed up way more than in the cookbook photo, and almost took on a meringue-y quality. Also, despite being a complete pain in the ass to deal with, the Madison crust took the prize for best tasting. Also flakiest. The Stitt crust was fine, and I would recommend it for a more savory tart, but the Madison crust went better with sweet.

And everyone enjoyed the meal, and I went to bed exhausted.