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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