These lovelies have me stymied.
We have 20 pounds of these mystery variety pears, which for a week after picking, sat in a cool back room to finish ripening and are now spot-on, perfect. The clock is ticking on these babies, and I'm stumped about how to best use them.
We have TONS of jam already, but then again, I do give a lot of it away. Hard cider sounds delicious, buy I feel like that isn't fully capitalizing on these pears' potential. Chutney? Pear sauce, a la applesauce? HELP!
I know of one way that we'll definitely be eating them - I just made a fresh batch of chevre last night. :)
For my chevre how-to, check out my post on Today's Handmade.
Pear sauce wasn't what I expected it to be (we didn't enjoy it much and ended up adding it to smoothies). Poached pears? Pear crisp? Baked pears?
ReplyDeleteI make pear butter -- just like apple butter, but the only spice I use is cardamom. It somehow makes the preserve taste more like fresh pears (the way good Poire William does), but I have no idea why it works.
ReplyDeleteIn Martha Stewart's "Pies & Tartes," there's a recipe for a pear frangipane tart that I've made several times. It's always a hit.
Another trick: make sorbet of the used the white wine-sugar syrup from poached pears.
Great ideas! The clock is ticking on these, so I guess I'd better make up my mind. I'm leaning pretty hard toward the frangipane tart. You can't go wrong with Martha!
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