Recipe: Pear Galette
Serves 8-10
Ingredients:
For the Galette Dough:
(makes enough dough for 2, 9" galettes)
- 2 cup all purpose Flour
- 6 oz unsalted butter
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 ice water
- 3 ripe Warren pears
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter into 1/2-inch cubes. Freeze the butter and dry ingredients separately for 1/2 hour.
- In a kitchen aide mixer or cuisinart, briefly mix the dry ingredients together, and then add the butter. Mix or pulse until the butter is incorporated but so some chunks still remain. While mixing on low, add the water. (If you are using a cuisinart, add water while pulsing.) You should barely be able to hold the dough together in your hand. You may need to add one more tablespoon of water.
- Form the dough into 2 disks, wrap in plastic and let 1 disk rest in the refrigerator for at 45 minutes; the other freeze for use later on. Roll tart dough into an 11-inch disc. Prick dough with the tines of a fork 5-6 times. Pre heat oven to 375° if convection, or 400° if conventional
- Spread the sugar/flour mixture over the bottom of the crust leaving 1 inch around the edge. Peel, core and thinly slice the pears into ¼ inch slices (vertically) arrange on top of the flour/sugar mixture in a circular pattern, each slice overlapping slightly.
- Fold edges of the tart over onto the fruit. Brush the edges with melted butter or water and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of sugar around edges and all over the tart shell.
- Bake for 35-45 minutes until edges are brown and fruit juices are bubbling. Let sit for 20 minutes before serving. Serve this tart warm out of the oven with pear caramel ice cream.
Pear Caramel Ice Cream
Ingredients:
- 3 medium sized ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced into 1/4 "pieces
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup ½ and ½
- 3 egg yolks
- Pinch of salt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- In a sauce pan, combine sugar with the water and stir to combine. Cook on medium-high heat brushing down any sugar crystals that form around the edge of the pan with a wet pastry brush.
- Cook until sugar is an amber color. (Careful not to get it too dark or the caramel flavor will overpower the pears, too light and it will be too sweet.)
- Add the pear pieces. The caramel will harden and crack but keep stirring over medium heat and the caramel chunks with melt and liquefy again.
- Stop stirring and cook for another 5-10 minutes of medium heat to poach the pears in the caramel. When the pears are cooked through but still retain there shape, strain from the caramel and set aside.
- Heat the cream and ½ & ½ together over medium high heat until it just starts to boil. Remove from heat. Stir the caramel into the hot cream and ½ & ½. In a bowl whisk together the yolks to break them up.
- In 2 additions, add 2 tablespoons of hot cream/caramel to the yolk sugar mixture, whisking constantly to temper the yolks.
- Add this mixture back to the remaining cream/caramel whisking until blended. Cook ice cream base over low-medium heat for 5 minutes or until it starts to thicken slightly. Remove form the heat, strain through a fine meshed strainer gently stir in pears.
- Add vanilla and salt. Chill thoroughly in the refrigerator or over and ice bath. Freeze according to the directions of your ice cream maker.
A decade ago, Farmer Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm became a national legend as a celebrity farmer thanks to his superlative, organically grown peaches. He was looking to keep his customers just as happy into the fall and, through a serendipitous meeting with a California fruit forager, he was introduced to the little known Warren Pear.
"I've been in love with this pear since I first tasted it." According to Al, "Pears don't have the sex appeal of peaches to many people, but I think the Warren Pear is about to change that."
These delicious, sensual fruits have become a favorite of Bay Area customers who encountered them at farmers markets. Many were also introduced to them at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA where Alice Waters serves only the very best fruit in her hallmark copper fruit bowls. At Chez Panisse, Frog Hollow's Warren Pears are the hands down pear of choice.
The pears are also available at www.froghollow.com until January. They are shipped to customers at peak, ready to eat, ripeness, and include instructions for holding the pears if they are to be served later. A 6-pack box of Warren Pears sells for $24.00 in the online store and a 12-pack sells for $34.00, plus shipping.
Courchesne is one of only two commercial growers of this variety in California. Thomas Oscar Warren, a horticulturalist in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, discovered the pears growing in front of the town post office and, while the Warren Pear has been likened to the Magness Pear, Warren believed he had stumbled onto a unique variety which has carried his name ever since.
Courchesne now grows 11 acres of the Warren Pears. Now, he looks forward to mid-August every year when the pears start to ripen, walking his fruit blocks on a daily basis to personally check on how the Warren Pears are progressing.
Becky Courchesne, Farmer Al's wife and a pastry chef, likes to bake the Warren Pears in a puff pastry Galette, a rustic French tart, and features them in her Caramel Pear Ice Cream. The pears pair beautifully with fresh Italian Gorgonzola cheese, and other blue cheeses, and are delicious served with a California Riesling wine.
Farmer Al Courchesne farms 130 acres in the Sacramento River Delta where he grows over 100 varieties of fruit, producing some of the country's most coveted fruit.
In addition to the Warren Pears, the Frog Hollow online store sells tree-ripened peaches, cherries, apricots, nectarines, Asian pears, pluots, and plums; an assortment of pastries; and its artisanal conserves and chutneys.
Visit www.froghollow.com or call (888) 779-4511.
