Spiced pear and apple tart

I wish I could give you a proper recipe for this, because it was really very good, but I can't. You see, I went into the kitchen with an idea in my head and just sort of riffed until it came together.

This is not my usual approach. Normally I would google, find 6 approximate recipes for what I wanted to achieve, consult another 3 cookbooks and see what they had to say on the matter, then put together all the bits I liked. I found it remarkably freeing not to go through that process!

I made a sweet shortcrust pastry, from a bit more flour than butter, with some sugar and an egg.

While the pastry rested, I made a spiced apple puree from 5 very small apples, a slosh of hard cider, a spoonful of sugar and a goodly pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. When the apples were soft I squashed them with a fork to a rough puree.

I blind-baked the pastry case while the apple puree cooled. I felt that this was the best approach to getting crisp pastry.

Then I spread the puree in the case and topped it with halved pears, raw and pretty hard, cut into slices for prettiness and ease of serving later. I brushed the pear halves with a little calamondin marmalade.

I baked it for about 40 minutes until the pears were burnished and the pastry was an appetising golden brown and the kitchen smelled like autumn.