Almonds, le mandorle, des amandes!

As you may have noticed, I am, of late, obsessed with eating marzipan and almonds. I like those nuts any which way (except in butter form), and most of all I love eating pastries with almond paste.

I was inspired by the Take Home Chef's Curtis Stone last night as he helped a non-cook husband prepare a meal for his wife of 10 years; this included twin blueberry clafoutis for dessert. (I am inspired by Curtis Stone in other ways, too, but those I will not share with you here.)

The clafouti, a traditional French dessert of fruit baked in an egg and bready custard, typically uses fresh cherries. Since it's currently pouring outside and winter's end is nowhere in sight, I decided to go with the fresh fruit in season--pears. I hunted down a recipe from the trusty epicurious as a start, from which point I adapted the recipe to ingredients that I had available and/or wanted to use. Such is the way of Jessica and her cooking! Using a mixture of the Bosc and Anjou varieties, I added the peeled pears to a mixture of eggs, flour, vanilla, butter and almond paste. Simple to make and even simpler to eat, the clafouti is best served warm and with a side of vanilla bean ice cream.

Recipe for Clafouti à la Poire et aux Amandes: (adapted from epicurious.com recipe for Pear Almond Clafouti)

4 pears, any variety (I prefer a mixture of Bosc and Anjous), peeled, cored, seeded
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 c almond paste
3/4 c all-purpose flour, sifted
3/4 c milk
4 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
1 tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9 or 10" round baking dish (a pyrex pie plate will work). Slice pears thinly (and all pieces should be similarly sized), and place into bottom of baking dish. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over pears and mix.

In a food processor, combine almond paste, milk, butter, eggs and vanilla until well blended and almond paste has largely been broken up, creating a smooth and liquidy batter. In a large bowl, sift flour and salt together. When blended, add the liquid mixture to dry ingredients and whisk together until ingredients are fully incorporated, with no clumps of flour showing. Pour batter into pie dish, covering pears, and bake in oven for 35 - 40 minutes, or until a toothpick or knife can be inserted in clafouti and come out batter-free.

Serve warm and enjoy with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

This may appear similar to last week's tarte tatin, but I can assure you, it's not!