Recipe: Pear & Chocolate Tart

This is another of those recipes of who's provenance I'm now quite unclear. I remember in the dim and distant past a recipe from Prue Leith that went by the same name, but I think it had very little to do in practice with this particular version. In structure, this is the same as Julia Child's classic Tarte Normande, and the chocolate part bears a strong resemblance to Nico Ladenis' Chocolate Tart recipe - so perhaps I just ended up amalgamating the two......who knows?

For Two.

Ingredients: 2 sheets of Phyllo Pastry, each approx, 12" x 6"; 3 oz of Butter; 1 small, ripe Pear; 2 oz of Sugar (or equivalent volume sweetener); 1 heaped tablespoon of good Cocoa Powder; 1 Egg.

Method:

1. Use the Phyllo Pastry and 1 oz of the Butter to make two Pastry Shells. Leave the oven on at 200 degrees C after you take the baked shells out.

2. Peel and core the Pear, then slice the flesh finely. Distribute the slices between the baked pastry shells - you'll probably have more than you need - and then use 1 tablespoon of the Sugar to sprinkle over the slices. Place the the tart shells in the oven for approximately ten minutes, until you can see the tips of the Pear slices beginning to colour. Reduce the oven temperature to 150 degrees C.

3. Meanwhile, melt the remaining Butter over low heat - I use a zimmertopf, so I don't have to stand over it while the Butter melts - and stir in the Cocoa Powder. Whisk the Egg with the remaining Sugar, and then stir the Cocoa-Butter mixture into the Egg-Sugar mixture. Once properly incorporated, carefully pour this mixture over the Pear slices, to the rim of the Pastry shells.

4. Return to the oven, and cook for a further ten minutes.

Serve warm rather than hot.