Pear Caramel Surprise

The flavor combo of pear and caramel is glorious. In fact I was just talking to my mom on the phone about it last night. She’s on vacation in Washington and stumbled upon a small little chocolate shop and was offered a sample taste of a rich pear caramel sauce. Upon swooning when she tasted it, she told the owner of the shop that it reminded her of a sauce made near her home in Montana, King’s Cupboard Pear Cinnamon Caramel Sauce from Red Lodge. The owners response surprised Mom, the sauce was in fact the same sauce from King’s Cupboard that the Washington chocolate shop found to be so delicious and high-quality that they bottled it and sold it under their own label!

Similarly, today in my own kitchen, I was surprised to discover a swooningly delicious pear caramel sauce from a rather astonishing source.

You may remember that I mentioned a Pear Grumble in my list of to-make pear recipes. I was fascinated by the name “grumble”; I’ve heard of fruit slumps and bettys and of course, cobblers and crisps. I was also intrigued by the recipe directions which described mixing up a cobbler-like dough and then folding in the pears, followed by pouring boiling water and melted butter and brown sugar over the whole grumble. Amazingly, I found the recipe in a children’s fairy tale book that I happened to pick up for my five-year-old. She loves fairy tales from around the world and she enjoys cooking. The book combined both her loves: Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers & Eaters; tales retold by Jane Yolena and recipes by Heidi E.Y. Stemple. Recipes accompany each of the delightful stories in the book. The grumble story was The Magic Pear Tree tells the story of a wandering poor Chinese priest who asks for a simple pear from a miserly farmer. The farmer refuses, but the priest is finally given a pear by a town guard. The priest eats the pear and then with the seeds proceeds to grow a magical pear tree and then distributes the fruit to townspeople. The greedy farmer is left with nothing.

She refused to wear a shirt today

My two-year old did an amazing job of dicing the pears with her kid’s knife after I peeled, cored and sliced them. While she took eons to dice, I mixed up the recipe which I adapted to include nutty whole wheat flour, more pears and spice, and less sugar and butter.

The recipe is actually entitled “Magic Pear Grumble.” And not only does it magically produce golden brown bready tufts atop thick syrupy spiced pears (thanks to the ‘magic’ ingredient of the hot water poured on top before baking,) but the amazing buttery pear caramel produced around the edges of this Grumble is cause enough alone to run to your kitchen and start creating some fairy tale magic. (Make certain YOU get an edge piece!)


Magic Pear Grumble (Adapted from recipe by Heidi E.Y. Stemple)
2/3 c white flour
1/3 c whole wheat flour                                
2/3 c sugar (scant)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 c milk (fat-free is fine)
6 ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced
1/2 c packed light brown sugar
3 1/2 tblsp butter, cut in chunks
3/4 c boiling water
DIRECTIONS:
1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2.  In large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.
3.  Add milk and whisk until smooth.  Batter will be thick.
4.  Fold in pears.
5.  Pour batter into ungreased baking dish.
6.  Place brown sugar and butter in a heat-proof bowl and pour boiling water over; stir until melted.
7.  Pour hot water mixture over batter in baking dish.  Do not mix.
8.  Bake for 45 minutes.  Do not overbake, grumble will be syrupy.

Good Housekeeping Not-Approved

I love to try out new recipes. When I cook for my family, I retrieve recipes from a variety of sources: Favorites include Cooking Light magazine or Meal Makeover Moms for their healthy but yummy and fun-to-try selections; and for especially seasonal cooking in the summer and fall from our weekly farmer’s market bounty, I go to Relish Magazine. When I entertain, I also have favorite recipe receptacles – but I match the source to the character of the guests. For foodie friends, I go to: Epicurious or Food52 for trendy, conversation-starting fare; for relatives from the Michigan or Montana country: Tried-and-true Mark Bittman or Betty Crocker or the spiral-bound community/church cookbooks fit the bill; and for new friends (or for folks yet-unknown whom my husband invites over after church,) I have a stack of recipes-to-try that are a little modern but “triple-tested with the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.” I assume they have mass-appeal and they are from Good Housekeeping magazine. Well, unfortunately, today, Good Housekeeping failed me.

Leftovers- actually quite delicious!

My husband invited four fresh young undergrad students home for lunch after church today. (He met them on Wednesday but forgot to tell me they were coming over for lunch today until last night.) No worries – I’d planned to make Chilled Corn & Bacon Soup for dinner tonight anyway, so I just rushed around before church to prepare it a couple hours early. We had lots of fresh corn in the house and we always have bacon.

So around noon, as the young scholars were sitting in the other room chatting with my husband and daughters, I was struck with a bit of horror while dishing up the soup. I had known that “chilled” soup was possibly a stretch for college students – but it was a Good Housekeeping recipe – tested to appeal to the masses, right? However, the appearance of the cold soup may have escaped the Good Housekeeping testers. You see, there are two sorts of guests for whom you should probably not serve any soup with the look of, well, throw-up: College students and mothers of preschoolers. (This was especially top of mind since my 2 ½ year-old threw up on her dress not FIVE minutes before we were supposed to walk out the door to church this morning. In true inexplicable two-year-old fashion, she was fine 10 minutes after her mishap. We were late for church.)

Well, as the poor co-eds sat down to our table, I announced the menu: Warm sourdough bread with our own Ginger Pear Preserves, lettuce salad with red peppers and chick peas and home-made basil vinaigrette, and Chilled Corn & Bacon Soup. Silence.

In the end, I surmised that two of the dear guests liked it (seriously!) One guy was just really hungry and ate the soup and lots of bread. And one poor invitee choked down as much as was polite to do in the home of a strangers. My own little girl was familiar with her mother’s cooking style and her mother’s fondness for chilled soups this past summer; she asked for a second helping. Her father promptly emptied his soup into her bowl. (By the way, here is a recent success in the cold soup department, with my families' own seal of approval: Chilled Thai Squash Soup.)

I feel badly for the person who finds themself in a situation in which they feel obligated to eat something they detest, especially when the detested item came from my kitchen. So luckily, I served large pieces of dense chocolate cake for dessert. I did not tell my guests it was Chocolate Zucchini Cake. They ate every bite.

Sweet Ginger Pear Preserves

The other day, I invited myself over to the friend of a friend of a friend’s house (actually the son of our neighbor) to pick pears off their tree. They were happy to have us use the fruit. The tree was nothing short of majestic. It was heavily loaded with green and golden D’Anjou pears and it was gigantic, as a result of the rich compost pile at its base. This bumpy compost pile, however, made stabilizing a ladder very tricky. Still, the girls had fun climbing up and down the ladder and plucking pears off the tree.

In the end, we had about 3 bushels! How glorious to be able to have copious amounts of pears to cook and eat. On my list of To-Make Recipes: Pear Cake, Pear Slump, Pear Chutney. And we’ve just finished canning Ginger Pear Preserves.

My 2 ½ year old daughter was most interested in helping with this preserving project. I didn’t plan to peel the pears – only core them – but my little girl was eager to help, so I handed her a fairly blunt peeler. I figured she couldn’t hurt herself too much; no more than riding her sister’s Razor scooter in bare feet, which she also insists on doing daily. Sometimes there are tears, but they never last. She’s tough. Case-in-point: The good amount of blood she drew from her finger after handling the peeler and a pear for about five minutes. She was fine after kisses and a Hello Kitty band-aid.

Eventually…the Ginger Pear Preserves turned out perfect; thick and rich, caramely and gingery – but not overpowering with sweet limey ginger. Disappointingly, the recipe made only about 3 cups, instead of the specified 7!  I even padded the amount of pears and started with about 6 1/2 cups. (I may have boiled/reduced it too long - yet I turned the heat off when it reached the specified gel stage.) Since I didn’t peel the pears, I used the immersion blender just a little at the end of cooking to avoid big chunks of skin. The result was just right: Smooth with just a few chunks of fruit for texture. MMmmm, can’t wait to slather the preserves on my toast this winter! By then, my two-year old will be three and probably past her sweet klutzy stage. Sigh.

Intriguing Tomatoes

Tomato cobbler. I was intrigued too. Cobbler is made with fruit. But I guess tomatoes really are a fruit…so it should all work out right? Would it be sorta tomato-saucy? Or maybe the ‘fruit’ would turn sweet. The recipe has been on the very top of my To-Make-Recipes pile ever since it received all the Tweets from others who were also intrigued by the thought of Mark Bittman’s Tomato Cobbler.

Before baking

So here’s my report on the version with the herb topping which came together super fast once I dragged out the food processor: It was AMAZING! The fruit got juicy and rich and unami (yes, seriously.) The cornmeal baked up toasty to give the biscuit topping a buttery crunch. The tomato juices got wonderfully thick, thanks to just the right amount of cornstarch. And the herbs in the topping added just the right amount of sparkle – without the little kicks of herbal flavor from chives, basil and mint that I used, the dish may have been a little flat.

Golden baked

The dish would be perfect along a nice piece of lemon baked fish. (I just learned from The Splendid Table that lemon is a flavor that complements tomato nicely.) Tomato Cobbler would also be lovely topped with a rich scoop of crème fraiche and served with lemon vinaigrette-dressed salad and corn on the cob. (Corn and tomatoes are also a favorite combo.) But here’s our reality: We had it for dessert topped with plain yogurt. See, my girls had been playing hard all afternoon and were starved. So I whipped the recipe together but knew they couldn’t wait the 50 minutes (on the dot) for it to bake. So I served them deer sausage sandwiches and told them we had cobbler for dessert. Now granted, they were not quite as excited about Tomato Cobbler with herbs for dessert (sans ice cream that usually accompanies cobbler in our house) as they would’ve been by Blueberry Cobbler (with ice cream!) But they did eat every bite of my new favorite cobbler.

Brilliant

Before kids, my husband and I traveled to South Africa; on one of our safaris, a tardy British couple had to run after our large ATV in order to keep from being left behind. Once onboard, we all chatted quietly, while keeping our eyes peeled for wildebeests, wild dogs and elephants. Since the couple had only just arrived in South Africa and we’d been in the country for longer, the very proper British elderly lady questioned us on various issues in her high pitched tone of voice. Finally she asked about the mosquito situation. (Prior to traveling abroad, we’d had to get painful preventative malaria shots and were repeatedly warned to bring potent DEET insect repellant.) So in response to the woman’s question, my husband responded, “We’ve been in Africa for two whole weeks and haven’t seen a single mosquito!” The woman responded with relieved laughter and then screeched, “Brilliant, simply BRILLIANT!”

Eight years after our trip, my husband and I can still make each other smile by uttering the phrase, “Brilliant, simply BRILLIANT!” (Yes, you had to be there, but just imagine those words being uttered at soprano pitch in the middle of an African jungle.)

Last night I did a few things that were “Brilliant, simply BRILLIANT!”

We’ve been eating a lot of farmers market corn on the cob lately. And while doing so, 2-year-olds and 5-year-olds make gigantic messes of corn all over the kitchen floor. So last night, we ate outside on the deck! The whole mess went on the floor of our deck…and then I just swept it between the cracks! Why didn’t I think of that earlier? Brilliant!

Secondly, I needed something super quick to go with the corn. Checking the pantry, I found some Trader Joes canned trout fillets in olive oil. I lifted the fillets out of the oil and flaked it, added some of our fresh chives and then scraped in a few kernels of the sweet corn; after a twist of ground pepper, it was served on slices of French bread. The sweet corn and herbal chives made the trout tasted even sweeter.  

Beautiful, irregular rind

And the oil from the fish provided just enough moisture to keep the salad from tumbling off bread. The girls ate it up along with their corn on the cob and the sweetest, musky canteloupe from the farmers' market. Simple, tasty and “Brilliant!” 

Lastly, I just learned this trick from my frugal neighbor: Once you finish the last pickle in the jar, stuff the jar with fresh cucumber or zucchini slices and refrigerate for a couple hours. Voila, the easiest pickles ever. And they were delicious with our Sweet Corn and Trout Crostini! “Brilliant!

Mom, did you blow up my dinner?

The word is ‘on’ instead of ‘up.’ But when you’re two years old, all that matters is that there are pancakes on your plate and you’re worried about scalding your mouth.

Tonight we made Zucchini Pancakes from one of our favorite old Molly Katzen recipes. A couple highlights to share:
• When we grated 3 large zucchinis in about 1 minute flat using the food processor, the same two-year-old shouted excitedly, “Mommy, it’s zucchini spaghetti!” as she watched the shreds shoot out of the whizzing grater.
• My girls ate four pancakes each before I even got the sour cream or applesauce on the table. (I was still back at the stove flipping hot cakes.)

• Since we were out of feta cheese, we found that cottage cheese works great – maybe even better than the recipe-called for feta. The cakes are lighter and really moist; and if they’re really hot when you cut into them, you sometimes get a string of melty cheese all the way to your mouth.

• A flavor profile: The pancakes have crispy edges and insides that are light and fluffy; the salty cottage cheese brings out the sweet mint flavor which is all mellowed by the earthy onions. Yum!

Here’s my adaption to the Zucchini Pancakes recipe:

4 large eggs

Dash of salt

Lots of ground black pepper

4 cups (packed) grated zucchini

1/2 cup finely minced scallions (I used fresh white baby onions from the garden)
1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped (I used more since it grows like a weed)
1 cup cottage cheese; drained for a couple minutes through a colander (or 1 cup feta cheese)
1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Oil for cast iron skillet

My favorite Toppings:

Sour cream

Applesauce

1. Separate eggs and whip up the whites until stiff.

2. Combine egg yolks, salt, pepper, zucchini, scallions, mint, cottage cheese and flour in a medium-sized bowl.

3. Fold in egg whites.

4. Place a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. After 1 ½ minutes, swirl in oil to coat the bottom. When hot, use a 2 tablespoon scooper to scoop batter onto the hot pan, and fry for 4 to 6 minutes on each side, or until golden and crisp.

5. Serve hot – plain is best – but you could slather on sour cream and applesauce for those folks wary of anything zucchini.

Menthe a l'eau and hello

Menthe a l'eau is French for 'mint water.' And menthe a l'eau rhymes with ‘hello’ (pronounced ment-a- low'). I'm feeling the need to say 'hello' again. Yes, I know it's been a WHILE since I’ve written.

Our little boy was born in April and he started sleeping through the night last week. Now I feel a like a real person. We were on vacation in Michigan and Montana the entire month of June. Anyway, I'm back...and I know I'm really back to a routine because this week I popped the THREE kids in the mini-van and drove to three farmers’ markets. (Actually we walked to one.) Farmers’ markets and blogging were routine last summer… expect great things. I'm optimistic!  (Photo left: Menthe a l'eau and farmers' market squash)

So last night our French supper was inspired by a story I told the girls about when I was 16 and visiting a friend in France. She, her girlfriends and I would sit at French cafes and drink frosty glasses of bright green menthe a l’eau. Maybe my memory of how refreshing they were is so vivid because it was so hot in Châlons-sur-Marne that summer!

My daughter made the mint simple syrup herself (photo left). She cut the mint from our container garden and measured equal parts sugar, water and lightly packed mint leaves into a pan. We brought it to a boil then simmered for 2 minutes and then cooled. After straining out the mint leaves, we just added green food coloring and water (you could use sparkling water, but the French just use tap).

After all these years, the drinks were just as refreshing and just as bright green (photo below.)  And in French style we wrote our menu on a chalkboard:  Menthe a l'eau, Summer Succotash, Deviled Eggs, cheese plate, chocolate (photo above.)