This must have been what Juan Cole felt like when the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975. At the time, he was a student at the American University in Beirut doing his coursework when he “abruptly found [himself] with time on [his] hands: The Lebanese civil war had interrupted my studies at the American University of Beirut. He did not mope around and wonder what cruel twist of fate had interrupted his coursework, instead he went to Cairo and ended up writing a book on the Urabi Revolution, a very well respected book in academic circles about the seeds of Egyptian populism.
You might be asking yourself what Juan Cole has to do with this blog, so let me enlighten you. I am a recent graduate of UT Austin, who has abruptly found herself with time on her hands. You see, I finished grad school in December and after months of applications, I really thought that some company would have snatched me up by April. Yet here I am, still unemployed. Thus I have decided to look at my period of unemployment from a different perspective. Now I am finally going to do all the stuff I always wanted to do but never had the time. I will learn to ride a bike, I will read for fun, and most importantly I will finally start this food blog.
I love making beautiful things with food and I think that this would be a perfect way to use some of that time, which I have found myself with.
Now that y’all know what this blog is all about, I’m going to share with you a favorite recipe of mine: a pear frangipane tart. If you are having guests over for dinner or need to bring a dessert to a potluck, this is the perfect tart to impress all of your friends. They don’t need to know that its super easy to make :)
Pear Frangipane Tart
Recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking from My Home to Yours"
Serves 6
For the pears: *
2 large pears, firm but ripe **
1 lemon
4 cups water, optional
1 1/4 cups sugar, optional
Almond cream:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup ground blanched almonds
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 large egg
2 teaspoons dark rum or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Dough:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (4 1/2 ounces) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk
Dough:
Lets get started with the dough. Put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in a bowl and mix it a couple of times until combined. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or a sturdy fork. Continue until most of the butter has been incorporated into the flour (its ok if you have some small pieces of butter left over). The dough will look like sand but don’t worry, if you take a handful of it, it will clump together like a snowball. Add the egg and stir with a fork until the dough begins to form clumps. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and kneed it slightly to bring together any loose bits that may have escaped. DO NOT OVERKNEED.
Take your tart pan and butter it slightly. Then press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pan. Don’t make the crust too thin or it will fall apart after its removed from
the pan. Don’t press the crust in too much though. You want it to stick together but if you work on it too hard, the crust won’t be as crispy. Freeze the crust for at least 30 min, before baking.
Prebaking the crust:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 375F. Cover the crust tightly with a piece of foil (make sure to fit it to the crust and you can use pie weights or dried beans to weigh it down and prevent it from puffing up during baking) and bake for 20 min. If the crust puffs up, press it down gently. Remove the foil and return to the over for another 5 min. Once crust has browned take it out of the over and place on a cooling rack while you make the filling.
Time for the pears. If you are using canned pears, you won’t need to poach them so you can just skip down to the instructions on making the filling. Take you pears, peal them but leave them whole. Bring 4 cups of and 1 ¼ cups of sugar and the juice of a lemon to a boil in a saucepan (big enough to hold the pears). Add the pears to the syrup and lower the heat to a simmer. Cook the pears until they are tender (about 15 min). Cool the pears to room temperature. Once the pears are cooled, slice the pears lengthwise, and take out the core. Then slice the pears horizontally. Make sure to pat the pears dry so that the juice doesn't mess up the almond cream.
Almond cream:
If you went out and bought blanched almonds you can skip down a little further and proceed with the butter cream. You will need to blanch them by placing them in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them to just cover them. Let them sit in the water for about a minute and then drain them, rinse them under cold water and pat them dry. Once the almonds are dry, it will be very easy to get the skins off. 
Then grind the almonds in the food processor and set aside.
Now you want to take the butter and sugar and beat it together with a fork until it is smooth. Add the ground almonds as you continue mixing until they are well blended. Mix in the flour and the starch and once incorporated, add the egg. Continue mixing until the cream is homogenous and set aside.
Assembly:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Take the now-cooled tart shell and pour the almond cream into it making sure to spread it out evenly. Carefully lift the cut pear halves and place them on the almond cream. Press down a little to pan out the pear slices.
Place the tart on a baking sheet and slide it into the over (on the middle rack) to bake for about 50-60 min. The baking sheet is important because the almond cream will puff up significantly and can even spill over the edge of the tart pan and cleaning a baking sheet is easier than cleaning the oven :). Once the almond cream has puffed up around the pear and turned a nice golden brown, take the tart out of the oven and let it cool on a wire wrack for a bit before unmolding.
The original recipe calls for a dusting of powdered sugar before serving and glazing the pears with an apple jelly mixture, but I think that the tart looks great without that. Enjoy!
*If you want to use canned pears, you can substitute 6 halves and skip the poaching process.
**The original recipe called for three medium pears but I found that I couldn’t fit more than two pears into the tart pan.
