Feuillantine of spiced pears with a light peanut cream

  • Icône représentant le temps de préparation de la recette For 4 person
  • Icône représentant le temps de préparation de la recette Preparation 25 min.

Preparation

  1. For the circular tuiles:

    Put the icing sugar and the fondant in a thick bottom pan and heat to 150 degrees C, then mix in the milk chocolate. Once melted, tip the mixture out on to a clean flat surface (a confectioner’s marble slab is ideal) and spread it thinly to solidify. Once it has hardened off, scrape it together and grind it down to a fine powder in a blender. Take one or two non-stick baking sheets and make thin circles with the powder, about 10 cm in diameter (a plain circular biscuit or cookie cutter may help to keep the shapes even and regular). Put the baking sheets in a preheated oven at 160 degrees C, just long enough to melt the powder again and make the thin discs or tuiles of chocolate. Take them out of the oven immediately and let them solidify once again. You will need 20 tuiles to construct all the levels of the four feuillantines.

    For the peanut cream:

    Take the granulated sugar and the cream and whip the cream before adding the peanut paste. Put in a cool place.

    For the spiced pears:

    Heat the honey and the finely ground Szechuan peppercorns in a saucepan, then add the diced pears, with the orange and lemon zests and the lemon juice. Let the pears cook through and mush down on a fierce flame for a short while. Take it off the heat quickly and put it in a cool place.

    To assemble the dessert: Put a tuile in the centre of your plate and then with an icing bag(3) place a small quantity of peanut cream, followed by a little bit of stewed pear. Repeat this sequence four times, topping the feuillantine off with a final tuile.

    Serve straight away.

    * This feuillantine is a multilayered circular constructed dessert, with a repeated sequence of peanut cream and spicy pear. Each layer starts and finishes with a thin chocolate disc or “tuile”.

    (1) A tuile literally means a roof tile, although here it refers to wafer thin discs of chocolate.

    (2) Fondant can be bought readymade from either a supermarket or a cake decoration specialist. (You can make it at home using 400g sugar, a soup spoonful of glucose syrup and 150ml of water, boiled just long enough to make it set and poured out on to a marble slab to cool. Since it needs working over with a spatula to be useable once it has set, many people prefer to buy it readymade.)

    (3) If you do not have an icing bag to use, fill a clean food grade plastic bag with the cream and snip off a corner. Be gentle, though, because this arrangement is not as tough as an icing bag!

Products used