I went sort of nuts today. I don’t know why. I had to come up with what we were going to have for dinner tonight and I decided on rice and mushrooms cooked in chicken broth first. Then I decided to use half the bunch of broccoli I got in the CSA box, and finally I decided I would step out of my comfort range and make pork for dinner. I’m fairly comfortable cooking chicken and fish, but I generally leave the meats to Darin. But no more! I am cook; hear me roar.
Then I really stepped outside the box and decided to make a dessert too.
I read On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrman Loomis a while ago. I went nuts reading Ex-Pat Literature—not from any particular desire to move to another country (I’d rather try to straighten this one out first) but because it’s so much fun to move to another country vicariously, and let someone else go through the pain of finding the place to live and refurbishing it and what not.
Loomis’s book is about how she went to cooking school in France and ended up living in Louviers, in a house her husband refurbished for them. Being a food writer of some renown, of course she includes the recipes for several tasty dishes throughout On Rue Tatin, and one in particular caught my eye: Pear and Honey Clafoutis.
Why it caught my eye when a)I generally don’t eat fruit desserts, preferring to stuff my ever-growing cheeks with chocolate and b)I’ve never had a clafoutis, I have no idea.
But we had some rapidly ripening Comice pears and, well…what the hell.
Pear and Honey Clafoutis
From On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis
4 to 6 servings.
3 large pears/1.5 pounds/750g, peeled, cored, and cut in sixths
1/3 cup/75ml mild but perfumed liquid honey, such as lavender
4 large eggs
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons/115g flour
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon/50g sugar
Pinch of fine sea salt
1 cup/250ml milk
4 tablespoons/60g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1. Preheat the oven to 400F/200C/gas 6. Butter and flour an 11-inch/27.5cm round baking dish
2. Arrange the pears in an attractive pattern in the baking dish. Drizzle them evenly with the honey.
3. Separate 3 of the eggs. In a large bowl mix the flour, all but 2 tablespoons (30g) of the sugar, and the salt. Make a well in the center and add the milk, 3 egg yolks, and 1 whole egg. Reserve the egg whites. Whisk together the ingredients in the well, then gradually whisk in the dry ingredients to make a smooth batter. Quickly but thoroughly whisk in the melted butter.
4. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites with a small pinch of salt until they are foamy. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and contine whisking until soft peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the batter, then pour the batter over the pears. Bake in the center of the oven until the clafoutis is puffed and golden, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
5. To make the caramel, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar with 1 teaspoon of water in a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat, shaking the pan occasionally to evenly distribute the sugar, until the mixture turns a deep golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Don’t stir the sugar, which might encourage it to crystallize, just rotate the pan so the sugar and water carmelize evenly. When the sugar has caramelized, drizzle it over the top of the clafoutis. Wait about 5 minutes so the caramel hardens, then serve.
Okay, I have no idea how I did on the scale of Passable Clafoutis to Clafoutis Master, because, as I said before, I’ve never had a piece of clafoutis, nor have I ever seen one. I assume my preparation was not perfect: she mentions drizzling the honey over the pears, whereas for some reason with that amount of honey I poured it on thick and heavy all over the place; I never did get the egg whites to form soft peaks but I folded them in anyhow (guess I gotta get a copper bowl, eh?); and if I had to do it again I’d double the amount of caramel that I’d make up, because what you get from this mixture is a few droplets from the top of the dish, and I’d prefer more caramel.
That said, what I made was pretty goshdarn tasty, if a little too heavy on the honey for me. (Yes, I know what the name of the dish is. Stifle it.) Darin had two helpings. Cooked pear? Delicious. Yum.
The kids, of course, didn’t eat it. But I’m used to that by now. And, hey: more for me.
Update: Here is a picture of the 12-hour-old, refrigerated clafoutis:
I clearly have my work cut out for me in learning to take pictures of food. There are no green bits in the clafoutis, okay? Baaaaad lighting. I need stronger lighting if I’m going to take a picture of something.
I then cut a piece to see if I could take a picture of just one piece (not in focus, I couldn’t) and to eat. then Simon woke up from his nap, came downstairs, and checked out the piece serving as my model. “Eat that?” he asked. Whereupon he ate the unsuspecting piece of clafoutis. So, the pic of the baking tin is all you get.