Hello fellow foodies to another weekly feast:

This week I would love to share a delicious healthyfied recipe with a French cuisine background. “The tarte” is a pie that does not only sound delicious in an exquisite way, but also has a long tradition and history. It is not as hard to make as most of the people assume and it can be actually a quite healthy dessert with a few tweaks here and there. In my case I added some whole wheat flour, just used little sugar (next time I will make a try to use agave instead) and replaced half of the butter-fat with soy yogurt.

My poor boyfriend had to move quite a bit around the kitchen while I figured out the best lighting for the pictures. Finally he found a corner to just sit down on the flour, revolved by the kitty.

Tartes aux Poires

This recipe fits an 9 to 10 inch pie

filling

• 1 huge pear
• 1 tbsp raisins
• juice of 1/4 lemon
• few drops rum aroma
• cinnamon
• 1 tbsp flour

Pit the pear and cut it in fine slices. Arrange them on a plate, drizzle with raisins, lemon juice, rum flavor, cinnamon, vanilla mixture and flour. Afterwards mix everything nicely through – it is all right if it looks like an Eton mess.

dough
(alternation of this recipe)

• 1/2 cup rye flour
• 1 cup whole wheat/ all purpose flour mix
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup butter + soy yogurt mix
• 1/3 cup soy yogurt
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 1/3 cup water

I placed all of the dough ingredients in a huge bowl and brought them together with a hand mixer. Afterwards I followed these instructions for dough folding and left it for half an hour of rest in the fridge.

As soon as time has passed (and you probably worked on the mess you left in the kitchen), preheat oven to 425 degrees and take out the dough and roll it out on a flour surface. Work fast, so that the dough is still cold and can be rolled out thin. Thinner than on my pictures, my tart was a little too tough at the end. Place the rolled out half in your pie dish and fill it with the sliced pear in a fish scale pattern, drizzle raisins and nuts on top (I did half walnuts and half cashews here – due to my boyfriends antipathy regarding walnuts), set aside.

Roll out the other half the same way, then cut in broad slices. Braid the slices over the prepared pie and press the ends on the dough beneath.

Place the tarte in the oven for about 25 to 30 minutes and check in between for desired grade of browning. Enjoy still warm – that is the point of over the top deliciousness!

And here some other food I enjoyed in my first week Organic On A Budget week.

This one is my favorite tofu scramble, made with a mixture of firm and silken tofu and a lot of Indian spices. This special mixture has to be devoted to my best friend – she truly is a freak for pumpkin and shared this meal with me on Monday evening.

And here you have my favorite store bought chocolate cookies. I could never stand chocolate cookies due to their slightly scientific aftertaste – this ones taste like homemade plus they are organic and vegan, win win! I did also purchase another package of my favorite green tea for my aunt. It is the mildest Sencha I tasted yet and I really do hate when a green tea comes out bitter.

What were your favorite buys this week?