Pear and lime meringue pie

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 1 tart, you will need:

• 1 300 g Confectioner's custard (Crème pâtissière, or French pastry cream)
• 2 30 g cornflour
• 3 30 g caster sugar
• 4 1 lime
• 5 3 drops food colouring (optional)
• 6 300 g Sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée)
• 7 200 g Italian Meringue
• 8 5 Pears
• 9 30 g Clarified butter
• 10 1 lemon
• Total weight: 2,030 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
2 hours 15 min.	25 min.	2 hours 40 min.

Step by step recipe

• 1: Make lime crème pâtissière (confectioner's custard) as for 300 g Confectioner's custard (Crème pâtissière, or French pastry cream), but with these special proportions: 30 g caster sugar and 30 g cornflour, and infuse milk with finely chopped zest of 1 lime before boiling.
  Then, when cream is cooked, beat into it juice of 1 lime, and if desired 3 drops food colouring (green).
  Leave to cool covered to prevent skin forming, or whip during cooling from time to time.
  Set aside your lime crème pâtissière.
• 2: Bake blind the sweetcrust pastry.
  Set aside.
• 3: Peel 5 Pears, cut in four, discard core and sprinkle with juice of 1 lemon .
• 4: Melt 30 g Clarified butter in a frying pan, then tip in pear quarters (and lemon juice).
• 5: On high heat, cook until they begin to brown.
  Note: Clarified butter is preferable, to avoid the little black bits visible in this photograph, due to overheating ordinary butter.
  Set pears aside.
• 6: Prepare 200 g Italian Meringue.
• 7: Lighten the cream by folding 2 large spoonfuls of meringue into cold lime crème pâtissière,.
• 8: Continue gently, by tilting the pan, until you have a light cream.
• 9: Put a layer of this cream in the cooked pastry case.
• 10: Arrange pears quarters on cream.
• 11: Spread the rest of Italian meringue on top of the tart.
  You can use a forcing bag as in the photograph, or a spatula and then draw patterns with a fork on the surface.
• 12: For best results, meringue should cover the whole surface of the tart.
• 13: To finish, brown the meringue gently with a blow lamp, or by putting under the grill for just a few seconds.
• 14: It's ready, refrigerate until serving.

Remarks

If you want to simplify the recipe, use French meringue (with caster sugar, not cooked) instead of Italian.

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