Sweet Sunday: Roasted Pear Tart

Once you've roasted pears that make their own caramel sauce (see: Roasted Caramel Pears with Crème Fraîche and Toasted Pistachios), it's a short, easy ride to make this roasted pear tart.

I used a sweet tart dough (from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" I highly recommend his cookbooks), 4 ounces each crème fraîche and fromage frais as the filling, drizzled the caramel sauce from the roasted pears over the fruit and garnished with toasted ground pistachios. All-in-all pretty simple. You can roast the pears the day before as well as make the tart dough and refrigerate that until the next day.

The assembled tart needs to chill in the refrigerator for a few hours before you serve it; the extra sliver I stashed in the refrigerator tasted great the next day, too. After chilling the tart, take it out of the refrigerator about an hour before serving.

Crème fraîche and fromage blanc, combined.

What is this "fromage blanc", you may ask? Fromage blanc is a creamy soft cheese made with cows milk. and not cream (like crème fraîche) and as Cowgirl Creamery makes it, it is what American grocery store cream cheese can only dream it could be but never will be. It has about 30% less fat than regular U.S. cream cheese and I think it's exponentially better. I wanted the tartness and rich, creamy taste of the crème fraîche to be there but not so forward. The fromage blanc was the perfect pairing. Look for it in your neighborhood from a good purveyor, buy and taste some and I'll bet you like it. A lot.

RECIPE: ROASTED CARAMEL PEAR TART

New Page - Cooking & Food-Related Sites

My other two pages (in addition to the blog posts on the "Home" tab) are woefully bereft of content, but I have added a third additional page, Cooking & Food-Related Sites. I have regularly accessed all of these sites, but if one 'goes dark', leave a comment and I'll make the correction.

Suggestions and additions are welcome, too.

Roasted Caramel Pears with Crème Fraîche and Toasted Pistachios

Want to make a dessert that's dead easy and delicious, where the main part of the dish is comprised of two ingredients (pears and brown sugar) and makes it own sauce? Well, this just might be the one.

Lynn and I saw this on one of Joanne Weir's cooking shows and looked up the recipe on her site. We made it for my birthday dinner and periodically rave about it. We're making it as a Thanksgiving dessert, in lieu of pie, because we never seem to get to the pie on Thanksgiving.

For this recipe, I used crème fraîche instead of the called-for Marscapone, omitted the honey and used toasted, ground pistachios instead of pecans. I like the slight sour-ness to the crème fraîche, I think adding honey to it is overkill and toasted pistachios give a little crunch, texture and nutty flavor to the dish.

This is not a regular "Sweet Sunday" recipe, but I used the pears for a "Sweet Sunday" tart recipe that will be posted very soon.

Selecting Pears & Pear Care

The original post from which I adapted this recipe calls for Bartlett pears. For my version, I chose Bosc pears. Bartlett pears will release more liquid and be much softer when completely cooked. Just make sure they are barely ripe when you're ready to prepare your dish or your roasted Bartlett pears will be mushy.

Bosc pears have a golden brown, matte and somewhat rough-feeling peel.

 I know there are other baking-appropriate pears out there, but I chose Bosc pears. They don't have the gold-and-rosy sexy blush of Bartlett and other pears but they are a workhorse when it comes to baking. When ripe, they are firmer than most other eating pears. To test for ripeness, press gently near the stem and if it gives to that gentle pressure, it's ready to use. Ripen pears in a warm, room temperature place outside of the refrigerator and test daily for ripeness. Once ripe, store in the coldest spot in the refrigerator, uncrowded and in a single layer - but not in the crisper, they are too easily bruised.

Because pears ripen from the inside out, ripe fruit will give gently to gentle pressure near the stem. Waiting until pears are soft around the middle may indicate over ripeness.

Toasting Pistachios

I read about a technique to toast pine nuts on Alton Brown's blog using the microwave and a paper bag. Although it worked - and I have ruined many a batch of pine nuts by being distracted for just a few seconds too many - the pine nuts were too uniform in color for me (yeah, I'm weird) and I think too much salt clung to them for my taste. I'm going to try it again with a shorter time in the microwave and less salt.

Raw, shelled pistachios, pre-toasting.

However, I love it for toasting pistachios and I used less salt than when I used this method for pine nuts and I was very happy with the results. The pistachios are just lightly toasted (retaining their beautiful color) and lightly salty. This method can be found below the main recipe for the roasted pears.

RECIPES:
 - ROASTED CARAMEL PEARS with CRÈME FRAÎCHE and PISTACHIOS and
 - MICROWAVE TOASTED PISTACHIOS

It's Fall! Squash, Beans, Chard and Bacon with Cinnamon

Happy post-Hallowe'en! Does anybody spell it that way any more? "Een" at the end of "Hallow" without the apostrophe means nothing. Yes, I know that Hallowe'en is (in turn) a contraction of "All Hallows’ Evening"

Man, I sound like an old grump. Hang on - I have to yell at some kids to get off the lawn. Or, rather, my sister's lawn. I am spending the week surrounding Hallowe'en visiting family in and around Tacoma/Puyallup, WA.

Even though it was a school night, the All Hallows Evening weather was fine and there was a constant stream of kids for a good 2 1/2 hours. My nephew parked himself, and his video game equipment next to the front door. I've had to fight him for the last couple of years to hand out candy. He's just likely saving himself the embarrassment of having his aunt answer the door wearing a t-shirt of zombies riding Segways ("We've Upgradead!).

This dish was so good, I made it two nights in a row on request. It tastes great warmed up for breakfast, with an egg on top. There's quite a bit of cinnamon, but it balances with the bacon and beans in a way that it's just savory and aromatic and not at all sweet, even with the roasted and caramelized butternut squash.

This isn't an original recipe but I cannot remember where I saw it. If I can locate the source, I'll come back and update the post.

Everybody, okay everybody who likes squash (good - more for the squash lovers!), loved this dish.
You can easily substitute smoked paprika for the bacon, or just leave it out. The dish won't suffer.

The first night I just used butternut squash, The second night, I combined the extra butternut squash
from the previous night with a large sweet potato.

Sun - the natural frost defroster, in the backyard.

RECIPE: SQUASH, BEANS, CHARD and BACON with CINNAMON

Staples: A Pound (Give or Take a Few) of Pickled Padrons

I get a kick out of making pickles. The smell of brine and spices takes me back to college when, during a couple of summers, I worked as seasonal help at a pickle-packing plant during cucumber season when they fresh-packed pickles (as opposed to a long brine). I came home every day smelling like vinegar, dill, garlic and other spices. My mom frequently made me take off my work clothes in the garage and throw them directly into the washing machine before I came into the house. I was -ah- rather pungent smelling and often sticky.

I really love pickles, but it always took me a month after working there to be able to eat them again.

The worst job was sorting the cucumbers. They'd dump  bins of cucumbers onto several conveyor belts and workers, on either side of the belt would sort out any that weren't  the appropriate size or shape - depending on what they would be used for - and throw out the ucky looking cukes and any leaves or stems. The smell wasn't good, but I got used to it. The worst part was staring at a moving conveyor belt for hours at a stretch. When you looked up, you were a little dizzy and anything stationary you looked at appeared to be moving like the conveyor belt. Dumping glass (overturning boxes of glass jars at the start of the production belt to be filled with cucumbers, pickling spices and brine) wasn't bad once you got a rhythm going and adding the pickling spices wasn't too bad either.

This is exactly like the thumb guards I wore.
I think I might still have one, somewhere.

The second worst job after sorting was... Do you know why the first dill pickle's so hard to get out of the jar? Well, that's because one of our jobs was eight workers standing four to a side of a bin filled with cucumber, with the conveyor belt split to run along each side of the bin and after most of the cucumbers had been added to the jars by going through the "shaker" and the pickling spice added, we would shove in one or more cucumbers so that the jar was completely full and the cucumbers tight against the upper shoulders of the jar.

This was hard on the back and the thumbs. After I got used to it, I had thumbs of steel, but my back never acclimated. I also wore thumb guards under my gloves. As summer jobs went, it paid very well. I liked working swing because once the sun went down, the plant cooled off a little. The absolute best job was when you got to drive a fork lift. Whee!

Just a hair short of a pound.

I'm going out of town for a few days and had a surplus of Padrón peppers - Pimientos de Padrón - a generally mild chile used frequently as tapas - quickly and gently fried, then seasoned with salt. To round that out, I had about 8 really small sweet peppers. I knew that I wouldn't get to them before I left and I didn't want them to go to waste. Pickling most vegetables is dead easy and fast, especially if you're making a refrigerator pickle. If you want to make something shelf-stable, make sure you follow the rules regarding canning, else bad things may happen.

This was the last time my face got this close to the pan while cooking the brine.
Vinegar fumes can knock you sideways. Opening a window or turning on your kitchen fan helps,
once the liquid starts to come to a boil.

This brine will work with just about any peppers or other vegetables and the spicing can be adjusted to your own taste. You should let the jar sit in the refrigerator for a week before eating. I'm looking forward to eating these when I come back, in a salad, as a part of another garnish or just for snacking.


RECIPE: PICKLED PEPPERS