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Meringued Pear Pie

This is my personal pear recipe... I hope you'll like it!

Ingredients for a 9 inches pie:
- A shortcrust pastry made of 150 grams of flour, 75 grams of soften unsalted butter, 60 grams of sugar, 2 egg yolks... Yes, the quantities are in grams... Get over it... it's much more precise, and if you want to make some pastries, precision is important... It's also very easy, as you can now buy extremely inexpensive scales that can measure in metrics or English units.
- 1 big (as in around 850 grams) can of pear halves in syrup.
- A filling (meringue) made of 2 egg whites and the syrup from the pear can

Step by step:

1. Open the pear can and put the syrup in a pan, on a small fire on the stove... Your target here is to reduce and concentrate the syrup to about 1/5 of it's original volume. Put your pear halves on a drainer to dry them. While you are wokring on the following steps, keep an eye on your syrup and stop it when the correct volume has been reached.

               

2. While the syrup is reducing, you have the time to prepare your dough (don't buy one already done, it's extremely easy to do and will be much better)... If you have a food processor, the easiest way is to put all the ingredients in it, and start it on a low speed (on a kitchen aid, with the dough hook, setting on 1 for about 5 minutes). You are supposed to add a little water to reach the correct consistency (it's about 1/3 of a cup, but will of course depend of the size of your egg yolk, current humidity, etc.)... That's where the cooking 'feel' is important... For the beginners, you are supposed to end up with a ball of dough turning in your food processor... If the ball doesn't form, it's either too dry (you have more like a powder, with some chunks in it), add a little water, or too wet (you have a kind of goo in your robot), add a little flour. Once the ball is formed, stop your food processor. If you don't have a food processor, you'll need to mix everything by hand (it should take around 10 minutes to arrive to the same result)

      

3. Start your oven at 300° Fahrenheit (140° Celsius)... The time necessary for the following step should give it time to preheat nicely.

4. Butter your 9 or 10 inch pie pan, than put your ball of dough in it, and flatten it by hand. You are not looking for a perfectly flat result, but just for a crust that is about the same width everywhere in the pie pan, including its sides.

             

5. Cut your pear halves in 1/4 of inch thick slices, and put them in the pie pan (just be sure that they are relatively dry before doing that).

                       

6.Whip your white eggs till they are firm. An electric whip or a food processor on fast are extremely reccommended. It IS possible to whipp egg firmly with a hand whipp or even a fork, but it's a long an tenuous process.
                       

7. At this point (or earlier), your syrup should be concentrated enough... If it's still hot, cool it by putting the pan in a bigger one filled with cold water (or ice). When it's cool, add it to your snow eggs slowly while still whipping. Your egg white consistency will go back to liquid, but should keep some thickness.

8. Add this filling on top of your pie. Depending of the pie pan size, it's possible that you will have too much of the filling, so don't overfill the pie. You can give the filling a little height, but too much will make it overflow in your oven.

                            

9. Put you pie in the oven for 30 minutes... As always, this can take longer or shorter in your oven, as the thermostats of a lot of them reflect very poorly the real thing happening inside... So keep an eye on your pie (and mainly look at the side of your crust: when it's nicely brown, your pie is ready).

                            

You can eat it warm, of course, but this pie supports very well to be cooked a day before and stored in the fridge... In fact, it will be easier to cut an serve when cold.