Poached Pears in Rioja, Ghoulishly Good!

I was doubly inspired to cook up something with pears because they are the fresh produce of the month over at Marta's An Italian in the US blog, and because I saw a cool recipe for pears poached in Spanish Rioja wine in one of the new cookbooks that ambled into the bookshop and was spirited home immediately, "The Cooking Club Cookbook" (by six cute young NYC publishing industry chicks, NY: Villard, 2002).

I have never done anything with pears other than to gobble them up out of hand, so I thought I'd give the poaching recipe a whirl. The Cooking Club Cookbook shows off the once-a-month Sunday afternoon get togethers that the authors had to hone their cooking skills. They picked different themes and cuisines for the chapters in the book and the first one, a Spanish menu, had lots of great and somewhat easy-sounding recipes. The Pears Rioja called for a flambe at the end, however, and given that the Crispy Cook has curly, escapist locks and a somewhat clumsy nature, I opted not to get any crispier with that finishing technique.

I found another recipe for Poached Pears in Red Wine over at this website, but it called for a scandalous amount of wine (2 whole cups!) and I was not willing to part with that much grapery. Taking the best parts of each recipe, (in my humble virgin pear-cooking opinion) I came up with this tasty recipe. We tried it as is and it's good, but it is even more delightful as a topping for vanilla ice cream.

Cooking it filled the kitchen with an imperial and suitably autumnal spiciness and it was great to be able to go to the market and buy hard fruit that didn't need ripening before cooking.




POACHED PEARS IN RIOJA

4 hard pears, peeled and cored. (I used Bosc pears and cored them easily with my apple corer)

1/2 cup Rioja or other dry red wine
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
Juice of one lemon
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

Combine wine, vanilla, sugar and spices in medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Keep an eye on the heat so it doesn't boil over. Let cook until desired syrupiness is achieved (about 10-15 minutes).

Slice pears into 1/4 inch slices. Add half of pear slices and cook over low heat, until medium-soft, about 10 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and add in remaining pears to cook. Add in first batch of pears and cool.

Cover and chill at least 2 hours or until cold.

Makes 6-8 dessert servings.

Today is the last day of the Fresh Produce of the Month's pear edition, so call on Marta in the next week to see the roundup of fruity recipes.

And a Happy, Healthy and Safe Halloween to all!

The Fall Harvest Continues with Dried Apples

Putting up the fall harvest is not over for the Crispy Cook. Those apple trees in our "orchard" (backyard) are still half full of apples so I feel compelled to make use of it. Wasting food is a sin, right?

Dan was in charge of the dried apple project and came up with an easy way to make these delightful and healthful snacks. He prowled around our extensive cookbook collection and gleaned preserving tips from several sources for this fail-proof recipe.


Dried Apples

Apples
Pineapple juice, fresh or canned

Peel and core apples. We have one of those corer-slicer gadgets that also cuts the apple into eight chunky slices. Cut each slice in half and then toss into pineapple juice to cover. This keeps your apples from turning an unappetizing dark brown.

Drain (and make yourself a pitcher of pina coladas with that juice!) and place on trays of your food dehydrator. We find that it takes at least 24 hours for all the apple slices to become fully dried out for storage, but check them every 8 hours and restack trays to keep them cooking evenly.

If you don't own a food dehydrator, you can dry them in the oven on very low heat as well, but that does tie up one's oven for a long stretch. In a drier climate, apples slices threaded and hung to dry on a string are probably even easier, but the humidity and fly population in our autumn kitchen conjures up scary thoughts.

This is my submission for the latest round of Grow Your Own, founded and hosted this time by Andrea's Recipes. Grow Your Own highlights home grown and harvested food from around the world. While our Zone 4 home garden is at its ebb, be sure to check out what exotic homegrown fruits and vegetables will be featured from our Southern Hemisphere Grow Your Owners when Andrea does her roundup at the end of the month.

Canning the Fruits of Autumn with Apple Chutney

When my eldest was an impossibly cute toddler Dan and I planted some scrawny Spartan apple trees around our manse. The saplings were awfully stick-like and we were not so much hoping for an orchard of fruit as some shade and landscaping for our lawn.

Fast forward fifteen years and now my apple trees are abundant with fruit and leafy as can be. We've battled with tent caterpillars, weird lichen-like scabs on the branches and spring snowstorms that battered all the apple blossoms off before the bees could get busy, so this is so amazing to see that our six apple trees have actually borne fruit. And so much fruit it is! Perhaps the long, cool spring and buckets of summer rain are just the right conditions for fruit-bearing.

We don't spray our apple trees and sometimes (alright, usually) don't remember the annual pruning, so the apples aren't pictures of beauty. They are scabby and knobby and you don't just brush them up on your shirt and take a bite after eyeballing some of the unappealing peel. But they do taste nicely tart-sweet and are wonderfully crisp.

My weekend was filled with the task of making applesauce, apple crisp and a velvety brown apple chutney. Peeling and excising out cores and inhabitants from these knobby apples takes a long time, so I didn't put up huge vats of apple products, but I did manage to get four containers of applesauce, 1 9x13 pan of apple crisp and 7 pints of chutney using the contents of only one tree. With five more trees to harvest, I am thinking that my horse and donkey owning neighbor is going to get a bushel of equine treats in the next week.

Chutney is the perfect accompaniment for spicy food, rice dishes and we love a bit of chutney and cucumber raita on the side of our Bhajis. It is also luscious mixed with sour cream for a quick dip or with cream cheese and curry powder for a stiffer spread. I tweaked the apple chutney recipe in my Ball Blue Book canning recipes cookbook and here it is:

APPLE CHUTNEY

16 medium apples, peeled, cored and cut into rough chunks
2 lbs. raisins
1 large onion, peeled and rough chopped
2 large red peppers, rough chopped
4 cups brown sugar
3 Tbsp. yellow mustard seed
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
1 Tbsp. crystallized ginger
2 tsp. allspice
2 tsp. pickling salt
2 tsp. hot pepper flakes
5 cloves garlic, peeled and rough chopped
4 cups cider vinegar

Clean 7 pint canning jars and lids. Place in canning kettle and bring to boil. Cover and keep warm while making chutney.

Place all ingredients in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and mix well to dissolve brown sugar. Place on stove and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered, 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring often to keep from scorching. You want your chutney to be nice and thick and not runny, so you may have to extend your cooking time if your apples are particularly juicy, as I did.

Pack into hot pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal and adjust rings. Place back in hot water bath and process 10 minutes once water has come to a boil again.

Makes 7 glorious pints of chutney.

I have also made this apple chutney with fresh cranberries, cut in half and that is a lovely holiday addition.

I am submitting this recipe to the Slow Food Edition of the Go Ahead, Honey, It's Gluten Free cooking event founded and hosted this month by Naomi at Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried. This thematic event showcases gluten-free goodies and I'm excited to see what slow-cooked treats everyone cooks up this round, which runs until September 30th. Be sure to check back with Naomi for a luxurious and delicious roundup.