Pears for Per

Yesterday was Per's birthday and I cooked him a very simple dinner with some of the dishes that we really like. Comfort food such as carrot rice, pumpkin purê, green salad (spinat, cucumber and slices of green apples) meat stew and for dessert we had chocolate and pears flognarde.

Per loves pears and chocolate and these two together make any dessert wonderful. I am not used to make chocolate flognarde so I adapted a recipe from La Tartine Gourmande (*)

The result was a million years better than I expected. I loved it and so did Per. The chocolate flognarde was really delicious and I used, as usual, low fat milk and low fat sour cream instead of whole milk and heavy cream that Bea's of La Tartine recommends. I also added a little bit more sugar than her recipe indicates.



Chocolate and pear flognarde

2 or 3 ripe pears
4 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
2 table spoons butter
1 teaspoon chocolate powder
50 grams chocolate at least 57% cocoa solids
1/2 cup milk (whole or low fat, whatever you prefer)
1/2 cup low fat sour cream or heavy cream
4 table spoons corn starch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Butter four ramekins and coat the buttered ramekins with a mixture of chocolate powder and one table spoon of sugar. Melt chocolate and butte in a double boiler (bain-marie) and reserve. Mix milk and cream and warm this mixture. Whisk egg and sugar and add vanilla. Add milk mixture to egg mixture and incorporate. Finally add chocolate mixture. Cut the pears in medium-small pieces and distribute in the four ramekins. Distribute the batter on the four ramekins covering the pears. Bake at 180 C for 25-30 minutes.

Serve warm or cold with a dust of confectioner's sugar.

(*) While Bea calls this dessert clafoutis I it flognarde as clafoutis, according to some source are only made out of cherries.