Things just always seem to work out. Simona announced that the Daring Bakers would be doing crostata this month and what was my mother doing for her book club this month and needed to bring a dessert? Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert giving me the perfect excuse to foist an Italian dessert off on my mother. Another of her book clubbers is married to an Italian so we were kind of worried she would do something Italian as well, so I went with the more savory crostata. Pear, walnut, and blue cheese were the winning combo. The basic crostata recipe consists of a short crust pastry sweet or savory, with your choice of filling; the most often being jams, fruit, custards, or more savory things such as cheese. Whenever I have to work with chilled butter for crusts or scones or what have you I use my food processor, pull the dough together with a little liquid, then throw it in the fridge or freezer as soon as I can. Everything is cold, cold, cold and works out perfectly. Like others mentioned, pasta frolla was fairly forgiving to work with, although a little crumbly. Having made shortbread I knew to persevere. I found that it wasn't as tender as a regular pie crust, but it was still very good. Two words of caution though is not to use too much blue cheese. The pears don't have a huge pear taste, so the cheese could overpower it easily. The other being that it probably would have been better to blind bake the crust. Although it wasn't terrible, it would have been better if I had blind baked it.
It went over very well (her friend having made tiramisu) and my mother only brought back two pieces which are being frozen for a later tea date. I will be posting photos to accompany my post, but the camera and laptop they are on is in Maui at the moment. It always seems to be the case...
UPDATE: I have added a photo of the final product. Mmmm tasty business!
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