KP+: Chocolate, Pecan & Pear Pie
A recipe from today's pop-up! See ya there!
well HELLO!
One of my favourite things about doing pop-ups is getting share the recipes on the newsletter afterwards. I’ll definitely get around to sharing all four of the pies from today’s pie & soft serve pop-up (which opens at 12 at Netil Market, London, E8 3RL, at Soft & Swirly with Verena Lochmuller… hopefully see you there!) but I didn’t want Sunday morning to pass without landing something delicious in your inbox!
As well as that, I know there’s people from all around the world that read this newsletter and though I’d LOVE more than anything to meet you IRL (and perhaps there will be some opportunities for that in the near future…) I thought I’d give you a slice of the action… digitally.
So, the pie party! Today’s menu is a glorious build-your-own pie sundae type affair. I’ve teamed up with the brilliant Verena Lochmuller, the head of pastry development for Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, and the ice cream maestros Soft & Swirly to put on a menu of actual dreams. All the pies are individual so you can use them as a base for a stunning swirl of ice cream on top and ALL the toppings:
And today, right here, I’m so excited to be sharing the how-to on the Pear, Chocolate & Pecan number. This pie was actually a last minute addition when I looked at the menu and thought: This menu needs more GOO!
I went through a few iterations to get this right, including umm-ing and ahh-ing about the inclusion of dates, but in the end I kept it fairly simple. It’s just a symbiotic medley - pears, pecan, chocolate. They just love to love eachother, ok?
About the chocolate, pecan and pear pie…
It took me a while to figure out what the best filling would be - I wanted it to stay gooey, if possible, and not over bake or cook whilst kept in the pie warmer. I also wanted it to be a delicious warm as it is cold or at room temp in case people decided to take them away. It also needed to be wrappable in pie dough. I umm’d and ahh’d about flourless chocolate cake batter, brownie bases, even chocolate cheesecake… and then it hit me: FRANGIPANE.
Our most noble and stable bestie, frangipane is great to work with and can be customised easily. Enter: the pecan nut. Pecans are incredibly high in fat - almost 70% compared to 50% in almonds - so it’s not an exact swap in, but with a few adjustments using my chocolate frangipane recipe as the base, I got the gooey filling of my dreams. I tried an iteration with blended dates, but to be honest the classic light brown sugar worked so well and the date flavour was completely lost, I didn’t think it was worth the extra steps.
That’s one thing I love about working with Verena; Part of her job at Ottolenghi Test Kitchen is testing and feeding back on recipes day in day out. One of the questions she often poses to me is “Can you even taste that?” as in, is an ingredient superfluous or is it actually making an impact? Sure there are ingredients that add subtle hums but are still powerful and important, but often we add extra steps (and ingreds) without much of an impact. Sometimes its better to get to the core of the recipe and simplify it. It’s the food equivalent of Coco Chanel’s immortal advice: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” So, the dates had to go.
Alright, let’s make it!