POACHED PEAR TART

With little doubt this has to be the highest point of my Patisserie journey on the LCB train, three weeks away from getting off. It is another enduring French Classic - we seem to do nothing but around here - and I surprised myself at the end. The preparation is a 2-day affair : poach the pears in red wine on the 1st day, and make the tart on the 2nd. An amateur, I was amazed how light green pears turn dark purple via red wine infusion overnight. The tart itself is no walk in the park. (1) first of all we make the Sweet Short Paste dough to form the crust, I must declare I received on-bench help from Chef Olivier, in case you marvel at the immaculate edges of my tart (2) we make a Dacquoise Base ie alomond meal, sugar & flour folded into medium peak egg whites, then baked (3) we prepare & pipe 2 layers of Creme Patisserie to sandwich the Dacquoise (4) we decorate with 2mm sliced pears (5) lastly we glaze it generoulsy for presentation. BTW this picture was taken before the glaze. At the demo kitchen in the morning I thought I could, at best, come up with a bad replica. I exceeded that low expectation. 'Not bad, the pear slices are of the right thickness, even and beautifully decorated ... and of course the crust is excellent'. He did not forget. Merci beaucoup, Chef Olivier!