Once you've roasted pears that make their own caramel sauce (see:
Roasted Caramel Pears with Crème Fraîche and Toasted Pistachios), it's a short, easy ride to make this roasted pear tart.
I used a sweet tart dough (from Mark Bittman's "
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" I highly recommend his cookbooks), 4 ounces each crème fraîche and fromage frais as the filling, drizzled the caramel sauce from the roasted pears over the fruit and garnished with toasted ground pistachios. All-in-all pretty simple. You can roast the pears the day before as well as make the tart dough and refrigerate that until the next day.
The assembled tart needs to chill in the refrigerator for a few hours before you serve it; the extra sliver I stashed in the refrigerator tasted great the next day, too. After chilling the tart, take it out of the refrigerator about an hour before serving.
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| Crème fraîche and fromage blanc, combined. |
What is this "fromage blanc", you may ask? Fromage blanc is a creamy soft cheese made with cows milk. and not cream (like crème fraîche) and as
Cowgirl Creamery makes it, it is what American grocery store cream cheese can only dream it could be but never will be. It has about 30% less fat than regular U.S. cream cheese and I think it's exponentially better. I wanted the tartness and rich, creamy taste of the crème fraîche to be there but not so forward. The fromage blanc was the perfect pairing. Look for it in your neighborhood from a good purveyor, buy and taste some and I'll bet you like it. A lot.
RECIPE: ROASTED CARAMEL PEAR TART
