Pear and verbena flan

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 1 piece, you will need:

• 1 500 g milk
• 2 2 handfuls Verbena
• 3 300 g shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)
• 4 3 Pears
• 5 ½ lemon
• 6 20 g butter
• 7 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 8 ½ vanilla pod
• 9 900 g paris flan filling
• Total weight: 2,365 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
1 hour 15 min.	30 min.	1 hour 30 min.	3 hours 15 min.

Step by step recipe

1	The Verbena Flan Maker Pour 500 g milk into a saucepan, add 2 handfuls Verbena, place over low heat, and bring to a simmer.
2	Blend the contents of the saucepan...
3	...cover and let stand for 30 minutes.
4	After this time, pour the milk—now infused with verbena—through a fine-mesh strainer. Squeeze the verbena well to extract all its flavor, then discard it.
5	Using the verbena milk, prepare " 900 g paris flan filling " and set it aside, covered.
6	The pastry crust Roll out the dough 300 g shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée).
7	Cut out a circle of dough 22 cm (8.7 inches) in diameter, and place it in the bottom of a tart pan of the same diameter, which is set on a sheet of parchment paper placed on a baking sheet.
8	Using the remaining dough, cut out 2 strips for the edges of the pan, and seal the edges to the bottom by pressing down at the seam with your fingers. Place the baking sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes.
9	Preheat your oven to 180°C (360°F). Fill the pan with lentils or ceramic beads and bake for 30 minutes...
10	...to pre-bake the crust. Remove the lentils from the oven.
11	Vanilla Pears Peel 3 Pears, cut them into 8 pieces lengthwise (into quarters, which you’ll then cut in half), remove the cores, and place them in a bowl. Drizzle them with the juice from ½ lemon, then toss to coat.
12	In a skillet over high heat, melt 20 g butter, and when it's nice and frothy, add the pear wedges and the lemon juice.
13	Next, add 3 tablespoons brown sugar and ½ vanilla pod, scrape their contents into the pan, and continue cooking...
14	... until the pears are tender and slightly browned.
15	Put them in a bowl.
16	Assembling the flan Pour half of the vanilla flan mixture into the pastry crust.
17	Arrange the pear wedges over the mixture (set aside a few, if desired, for garnishing the top).
18	Pour in the rest of the verbena flan mixture.
19	You can garnish it with a few pear wedges if you like.
20	Bake for 40 minutes. Let it cool completely before serving—ideally overnight in the fridge.

Remarks

As always with flans, you can use any type of dough you like—shortcrust, as shown here, but also sweet shortbread or puff pastry.
You can also flambé the pears with pear liqueur in step 14.

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