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Ingredients For the pastry dough
Directions For the Pastry Dough
Notes This is a very popular tart recipe that can be found on numerous websites. The recipes on the websites are almost identical to each other. All of the recipes recommend using icing sugar to make the crust rather than conventional sugar which is a bit unusual, but so it is. The recipes also recommend that one uses a fluted flan tin (It has to be rather largish so it can contain the filling which is substantial enough). I myself didn't have a fluted flan tin so I used what I had (That explains the picture!). In any case, it's hard to say where the original recipe comes from, possibly this is a traditional recipe that was created in one of the Northern areas of Italy (The use of butter is a fair indication of this). Some food historians might suggest that this type of tart is basically a French recipe that Italians copied or adapted. Frankly, this recipe is rather difficult to do. The crust burns easily and the custard doesn't cook as evenly as it should (Mine didn't). However, the pear and almond combination makes for a very tasty tart. Somewhat magical. I suppose this is the reason why this particular recipe is so popular. There are other hundreds of pear tart recipes but those that don't include almonds are second rate (Well, that's my opinion).... Photo: Mary Melfi. |