Spicy Pear Tarte Tatin

Just a quick bit of baking for you, now that the nights are getting darker there is something quite comforting about sitting down with a hot pudding and a bit of cream.

This is what the hubby and I made a couple of weeks ago.  Its a bit of a mash up of a number of recipes, but effectively its a sheet of shop bought puff pastry, some pears with some sugar and spices.

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I boiled down some sugar with a touch of water, some star anise, a few cardamon pods and some cinnamon.  Then placed in some pear halves (peeled) cooked them for a few minutes.  Now most recipes they say to pop the pastry over the top of the fruit in the dish you are cooking in.  I had too many pears for that, so I quickly transferred then to a warm roasting tin (warm so the syrup doesn’t do rock hard in seconds) arranged the pears and then placed the pastry on top.  Tuck it in around the edges and pop in the over.  25-30mins later – YUM!

Simple.  And you can do this with lots of fruits, I love the subtle warmth of the spices, but you could amp it up if you wanted a bit more heat.

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Family cooking

As a family we have really been enjoying the recent series of Simply Italian on Channel4.  Its great, simple, fast and super easy Italian demonstrated by a Welsh host with deep Italian roots.  It is awesome.  And all the recipes are available online.

I’ve never made pasta before, but it was super easy.  I wish I had used large eggs and I think my dough would be a bit better.  But thats a good tip for next time.  Once it was rested it was very easy to roll out, but do make it very very thin.  We made THIS recipe and it was scrummy!

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The show is available on 4OD in the UK, so if you aren’t watching it, get stuck in!