Drunken Pear Frangipane Tart

OMG. You have to make this dessert. It is AMAZING! There are a few steps but it’s not too hard and comes together beautifully! I also found that you can save yourself time the day of your event by making the custard and poached ahead of time waiting until the day of to assemble and bake. OMG so easy!

I really just wanted a Pear Frangipane Tart but this one seemed so much better, what, with the added sophistication of alcohol, haha! The recipe is from foodnetwork.com and can be found here. In case you’re interested, Frangipane is a custard like filling made from almonds. I love anything almond; frangipane, marizipan…you name it.

First you make your Frangipane custard. Here are the ingredients:

 

Use an electric mixer to cream your butter and sugar:

You’ll need ground almonds. I ground my own:

Then add the ground almonds, rum, egg, almond extract and flour. Beat until smooth and you have frangipane! At this point I put my frangipane in the refrigerator until it came time to assemble and bake the tart a few days later.

Now it’s time to make the poaching liquid for the pears. Here are the ingredients:

 

First, you need to peel your pears, keeping the stems intact. To be honest, I am not sure why the stems need to stay intact. I just followed the recipe 🙂 If anyone knows, please let me know. Here are my wonderful pears: (I LOVE pears)

You also have to prep your poaching liquid ingredients:

 

Combine the raspberry lager, sugar, lemon juice, zest, cinnamon, cloves and vanilla in a stockpot. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes. 

 

Then add your pears, reduced heat to a simmer and uncovered until pears are fork tender, about 20 or 30 minutes. Be sure to rotate pears during poaching process for even coloring.

 

After I poached the pears I put them in fridge too. How easy! You can make both the frangipane and the pears ahead of time and simply take them out when it’s ready to assemble and bake.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

 

Roll your pre-made piecrust and fit into a removable bottom tart pan. Set aside in the fridge.

Spread your frangipane evenly into your unbaked, chilled tart shell.

Slice each pear in half lengthwise; remove the core and stem. Place each half, cut side down, on a cutting board and slice crosswise into thing slices. Arrange the pear slices on the frangipane. 

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until shell is golden brown and the frangipane is puffed and brown.

In a saucepan, melt the apricot jam and brush the top of tart with a pastry brush as soon as it comes out of the oven. Cool to room temp before slicing.

And, viola! You have a beautiful, amazing, yummy Drunken Frangipane Tart! Makes me hungry just thinking about it…

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving this year was amazing. I am so lucky because I got to have not one but two dinners! I went to my dad’s on Thursday and hosted at my house on Friday. I love my dad and stepmom’s Thanksgiving dinners, they are just such good hosts! Also, every year we have a “beautfiul” plate contest and I usually win 😀

Here’s my “beautiful” plate 🙂 I am impressed by my stepmom Karen – this year our meal was almost completely gluten free and vegan (minus the turkey)! And you would never know! The food was amazing.

This year was also different because for once there were not one, not two, not three, but FIVE men! Usually us ladies dominate the family dinners, haha! Grandpa isn’t pictured but here are the rest:

What a bunch of handsome guys!

 
Most everything went well but I did have one snafu – I mistakenly reversed my work schedule and realized Thursday night that I was scheduled to work 9-5 on Friday! I was horrified. How would I possibly host Thanksgiving while I am at work? Well, I am so lucky because my sweetie Harvey (pictured at the top) saved the day! He got up early with me and went over all the recipes, front to back. He even came up with his own time table! When I got home I was thrilled to find everything going as planned, Harvey working hard in the kitchen and my wonderful grandparents, mom and brother chatting and looking at my brother’s Vietnam and Laos vacation photos in the living room. What’s even better is that my grandparents said the cheeses I chose were decadent and they couldn’t stop eating them! I love cheese and I love to share my favorites with other people. I am so glad they appreciated the Unexpected Cheddar, Belletoile Triple Cream Brie and Honey Goat Log that I love so much! 

The menu for dinner was beautiful and only slightly extensive. I saved myself (er, Harvey) a lot of time by prepping earlier in the week. Here’s what we had:

Roast Duck with Pinot Noir Pan Gravy
Green Beans with Lemon and Garlic
Wild Rice Mushroom Pilaf
Cranberry Orange Sauce
Drunken Pear Frangipane Tart
French Vanilla Ice Cream

I was able to make the Rice Pilaf, Cranberry Sauce and Fragipane Tart ahead of time so we only had to worry about the Roast Ducks (there were two) and the two veggie dishes on the day of. 

As you can see, we strayed from the traditional turkey and went for the duck. I have to say this was my mom’s idea. And what a good one it was! It was great to have something different, try out a new recipe and I look forward to making duck again 🙂

The one regret I have is I can only share a few of the dishes with you. Because I ended up having to work on Friday (the day of our Thanksgiving dinner) I do not have any photos of the Roast Duck or Green Beans. I will provide links to all the recipes below. I also don’t have pictures from the dinner. This makes me so sad! A combination of being overly exhausted and super busy does not lend itself well to taking photos 😦 I hope you can imagine how beautiful our meal was and how much fun we had! Thank you so much Harvey for all your hard work! You truly saved the day 😀

Roast Duck – Ina Garten
Green Beans with Lemon and Garlic – The Neelys
Sriracha Glazed Baby Carrots – The Brokeass Gourmet
Wild Rice Pilaf – MyRecipes.com
Cranberry Orange Sauce – The Wednesday Chef
Drunken Pear Fragipane Tart – Foodnetwork.com

Fluffy Omelettes and Fresh Herbs

Wow, it’s been some time since I last posted. Just over a month. Things have been so busy around here, what with Thanksgiving, my birthday, other engagements and Christmas and Hanukkah are upon us! So much cooking to do and so little time to blog, let alone remember to take photos, haha! At least I’ve remembered a few times…let’s see if I can remember what I did 🙂

This particular  morning, back in November, Sydney came over for breakfast. I am not that great at making omelettes. They always seem to turn into scrambles! I don’t know the exact reason but I am always trying to figure it out. This day I wanted to make a nice fluffy omelette. Upon googling I found Emeril’s recipe.  I made a few changes since I don’t normally have heavy cream around. I used milk, feta cheese and fresh herbs (basil, sage, mint and green onion) from the garden. The original recipe serves one and we were three; me, my mom and Sydney. To keep it light I upped the eggs to 5 instead of 6.

Ingredients:
5 eggs
3 tbsp. milk
1/4 tsp. salt
2 pinches ground pepper
1/4 c. light feta cheese
2 tbsp. butter

Here’s how it went:

Blend eggs, milk, salt and pepper until very frothy. About one minute.

Chop your fresh herbs and chop or grate your cheese.

Heat a large saute pan over heat and add butter. Swirl butter around hot pan. Once hot and bubbly, add egg mixture the to the pan. Use a rubber spatula and stir constantly and scrape sides down. You want to evenly cook the mixture. After about 30 seconds the mixture should look like wet scrambled eggs. Use the spatula to smooth the mixture evenly across the pan. Cook until almost set, about 10 – 15 seconds longer then top one half of the omelette with your fresh herbs and cheese. Using the spatula, fold the omelette in half and slide out of the pan onto a plate. Cut into 3 wedges and serve! Yum!

This omelette was so beautiful and so tasty; just ask my mom and Syd!