Pear, chocolate and almond tart

A few years ago I lived in an area in Dublin with fabulous gourmet food shops. Unfortunately they tend to be quite expensive so for daily grocery shopping they're not ideal, but for the occasional treat they do fill their purpose. One of these shops is a vegetable and fruit shop that also stocks farm fresh eggs, hand made cheeses, pasta, jars of all sorts of condiments, grains and pulses...The list is nearly endless and I always seem to find things in there that I might have been looking for in several other shops without any luck.
The other day I did not really need anything from there, I just cycled by and decided to have a look and there they were; these amazingly pretty pears, they were red, green and shiny. To pretty not to buy so I got two of them not even knowing what to do with them. But then an idea took place in my head after finding both ground almonds and dark chocolate in my cup board. Think chocolate frangipan in a cocoa flavoured pie crust, on top of that these juicy pears baked until slightly caramelized. Success.

Pastry

25 grams caster sugar

50 grams butter,at room temperature

65 grams plain flour

10 grams cocoa powder
1 egg yolk

Almond filling

75 grams butter,at room temperature

50 grams caster sugar

50 grams dark chocolate, finely chopped or grated
75 grams ground almonds

1tbsp plain flour

1 egg+1egg yolk

1 pear

Mix flour, cocoa powder and sugar, rub in the butter until it forms crumbles. Add the egg yolk and quickly mix into a dough. Roll out between cling film and line the baking tin. Put in the fridge while making the almond filling.

Beat butter and sugar pale and fluffy. Add egg and egg yolk and continue to beat until smooth and well combined. Fold in almonds, flour and chocolate. Spread out in the pie crust. Peel the pear and cut into very thin slices. Arrange the pear slices on top of the almond filling and bake for 30-40min on 160C. Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.