Mario Batali's Pear Tart Tatin

One of my guilty pleasures is watching The Chew on ABC.  As far as daytime chat shows go, it's fun and informative.  I especially like to watch Mario Batali.  He cooks with such passion and charm.  And you know his food is AMAZING!  That being said, one afternoon I watched him make a very simple pear tart tatin.  The recipe calls for puff pastry which I was not familiar with so I set out to learn something new.  In fact, I had to look up puff pastry brands online in order get a handle on what to look for.
Thanks to yesterday's trip to the farmer's market I now have 4 lovely pears.
Here's what I did:

1. Prepare puff pastry(mine was frozen so I had to let it thaw 40 minutes before it was ready)
2. Preheat oven to 375
3. Peel the pears
4. Cut them in half
5. Core them
6. In an oven safe sauce pan heat 4 tablespoons of butter
7. When that melts down add 1/2 cup of sugar(I used turbinado sugar because it was all I had)
8. Cook until it starts to integrate nicely
9. Add pears core side down
10. Cook until the sugar browns(in my case it was already brown so I cooked it until I was ready with the puff pastry.
11. Then place the puff pastry over the pears 

  12. Put the oven safe skillet in the oven uncovered for 25 minutes (I found I had to go 35 minutes.)

 

Batali held a serving dish on the top of the pan and flipped the tart over.  It certainly made the dish look amazing.  However, the pan was hot and a bit too heavy for me or my husband to risk losing any sauce, so we just cut it up and topped it with vanilla ice cream. 

 

It was delicious.  I wouldn't say this is a light dessert but it certainly is an inexpensive and fresh one. 

It came out to about $2.33 a serving including the ice cream.  

Here's The Chew's link with his recipe:

http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/recipes/Pear-Tart-Tatin-Mario-Batali 

Happy Fall Y'all,

KIM