Carl Cianci of Peppercorn's Grill shares the secrets behind perfecting airy gnocchi and offers a recipe.
The story of Margaret Sapir and Mitch Rapoport, and how they jumped from corporate America to the world of bread-making, whipping up the increasingly popular Pain de Campagne.
In pies and teamed with sweet wine, pears serve as the base of wonderful desserts.
Restaurants: White Horse Country Pub has balanced history-heavy walls with a "creative" menu of classic pub fare, while Panda Palace mixes uncommon dishes with traditional entrees for a tasty and inexpensive dinner.
Now this is something to wake up to. Linda Nguyen, the intrepid force behind the Australian blog butter sugar flour, whipped up this beautiful plate of French toast with spiced pears. The bread has that even golden-brown skin that is a hallmark of the best French toast, and the pears give it a lusty, buttery twist. The shallow pool of maple syrup is a nice, realistic flourish; you can practically taste the syrup-saturated toast, and feel it the sugary burn it leaves in the back of your throat. A very good morning, indeed.
Where have I been? The last time I saw a picture of Susan Powter, she looked like a shorn, tough soccer mom of sorts. Every time I go by my recipe book collection, I see her like this. (Why do I have her diet book? An old roommate had a few of her books, and I fell for the split pea soup recipe. So, when I saw the book for a buck, I bought it.) Now ... the woman has some sexy locks, tats, dark eye makeup, and an insatiable love of pears, it seems.
Above you can check out a super-strange ode to fruit, performed by Powter herself, as she bites into the fruit's juicy flesh and grumbles over the people who buy pre-sliced fruit in packaging.
Picking pears this fall? Choosing pears is not like picking peaches or plums. Unlike most fruits, pears are best when picked hard and unripe. They improve in both texture and flavor after they are picked, and they ripen from the inside out.
Martha Stewart has pages and pages of luscious fall dessert porn up right now, just in case you're looking for inspiration. They're arranged by ingredient, which is helpful. Some of the highlights:
Apples - Apple pie with cheddar crust; vanilla bean-baked apples; cranberry, apple and maple phyllo; apple-cinnamon upside down cake.
Pears - Salt-roasted pears with caramel sauce; pear pavlova; honey cake with spiced pears; saffron-scented pear upside-down cake.
Pumpkin and Sweet Potatoes - Pumpkin-swirl brownies; mini pumpkin whoopie pies; sweet potato pie with pecan topping.
Other - Concord grape sorbet; Concord grape pie; wine maker's grape cake; quince Tart Tatin; spiced cider soup with sweet potato dumplings, quince and dates.
I've been binging on pears lately, as they've been bursting from the boxes and tables of my farmers market. Mine aren't nearly as photogenic as these lovely ones (I find it hard to transport them from market to home on my bike without incurring a few bruises) although they've certainly been delicious. I'm hoping to buy a bunch for cheap, in order to make a batch of pear butter, which is one of my very favorite fall treats.
Grilled fruit is a healthy alternative dessert, and easy in the summer when the grill is already going. Almost any fruit can be grilled as long as it holds its shape through the process. smaller fruits can be skewered along with chunks of larger fruits. A side of sauce or cream for dipping is a good addition to your caramelized treats, as well as a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Trying this out couldn't be easier. Get some ripe pears and peaches but not too ripe. Quarter, core, and peel each one into four wedges. Grill until caramelized and smoky, and serve with a small mound of whipped cream on the side. I grilled the ones pictured here earlier in the day and then hid them in the fridge for later. No one complained about not having cookies or cake that night!
You're all set to stick your pie crust in the oven to blind bake, and you realize that you don't have any pie weights. No need to fret, there are plenty of alternatives in your kitchen already.
It just occurred to me that I've never had a pie that has more than one fruit in it. I've had dozens (if not a hundred) apple pies over the years, blueberry pie, cherry pie (not a big fan), and pies filled with other foods such as custard and pecan. But I've never had a pie that combined two fruits before.
But I plan on making this one, courtesy of Martha Stewart, the Autumn Harvest Pie. It has three fruits in it: apples, pears, and cranberries. The cranberries worry me a little bit. I'm thinking they might overwhelm the flavors of the apples and the pears, but I'm going to give this a shot. Full recipe after the jump.
I'm not sure how well this will go over with kids, since anything too highly unusual tends to embarrass them (or is that just me writing as the result of my own personal elementary school cafeteria trauma?). However, there has to be some way that you can work the Apple Jacket into their lunchboxes because it's just too cute to not use.
The Apple Jacket protects apples (and I suspect any other fruit that will fit) from bruises and knicks. The hand-knit sleeve is 100% cotton has a darling knit leaf detail and button closure. This is probably especially useful if you carry apples around in your purse or totebag along with other things like keys and notebooks that could damage the apple.
The Apple Jacket is $14.50 and comes in three colors, pink, white, and blue.
J Winery Pear Liqueur is 30% abv. / 60 proof. When I was researching this liqueur I found out an interesting story about how it came about. In 1995 the present day Cellar Master of J Winery, Tom Meeker, was playing around with fermenting pears, on the grounds that would later become J Winery and Vineyard. This pear juice was slowly fermented to full dryness and then twice distilled in a copper alembic still, to produce a pear brandy that was 50% abv. / 100 proof. The pear brandy was then laid down in French Limousin oak barrels for ten years to age and was basically forgotten about. Then a couple of years ago J Winery's Winemaker, Oded Shakked, purchased the distilled pear brandy for the company J Wine to use. It was then blended with de-ionized (rain) water and liquid sugar to make the liqueur. The liqueur was then cold stabilized and aged for six more months before bottling earlier this year.
Before I tell you anything more about this liqueur I am going to tell you a story. I make my own liqueurs as a hobby and four years ago I was hired to work as the hard cider maker for an award winning cider company and orchard. While there, I learned that pears don't ripen fully until they have been chilled almost to freezing. So pears left on the tree will just keep making sugar but have no nice flavor, until they are picked and chilled. But if picked and chilled; they ripen, soften, and develop their full flavor. Rarely a frost comes about and chills the fruit before they have a chance to be picked. In this case, if the pears aren't harvested immediately, and sold right away, you end up with a load of rotten fruit.
Mathilde makes 100% natural, 100% hand picked fruit liqueurs from their French family recipes that are over 100 years old. The Pear liqueur is 18% abv / 36 proof and is a very light yellow, gold in color. The aroma is that of pears that are at the peak of ripeness as if they had been sitting on your counter all week slowly becoming more and more aromatic. This is a light bodied liqueur that is on the pleasurably sweet end of the spectrum, and is crammed full of the essence of ripe pears. I'm drinking it chilled from a snifter and it's like biting into an icy pear so ripe and honeyed that the pear just disintegrates and bursts in your mouth with a splash of sweet nectar.
As sometimes happens when I smell and taste a fine spirit I was taken back to 15 years ago. It was the middle of the winter with several feet of snow on the ground and I was taking a course on wilderness survival and Native American spirituality out near the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. We were spending the week tramping around all day in the snow talking, and all night sleeping wrapped up like mummies in our bags in an old, unheated hay filled barn. It was actually quite comfortable if you don't mind temps of 14° F at night. Our food wasn't bad, but it was very boring for a gourmet like me, consisting of all kinds of healthy stuff like roots and hay, uh... I mean kohlrabi and granola.
A clafoutis is a French baked dish that has a texture somewhere between a custard and a cake that is usually topped with a layer of fruit before baking. The most commonly used fruit seems to be cherries, but my favorite is a Pear Clafoutis. It also seems to be the favorite of Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess, who made this particular example of the treat. Aside from the flavor, which is laced with cinnamon, maple and vanilla, the really wonderful thing about this dish is the fruit itself. The pears are peeled and sliced into thin, horizontal segments that are fanned out across the baking dish and topped with the clafoutis batter. The overall look is extremely elegant and, aside from taking a few minutes to prepare the pears, the dish takes almost no time at all. It is idea for serving to guests, either warm or at room temperature, and makes a fantastic breakfast the next day.
You can find Jennifer's recipe here. For a somewhat lighter version of the same dish, you could try this recipe, too. Either will turn out a delightful, fall-inspired dish.
A cold morning and a ripe pear were the inspiration for this breakfast. In summer, I'm likely just to opt for the fruit on its own, since hot cereal doesn't hold that much appeal when it is muggy outside, but when the weather turns colder, I like to start my day off with hot food. Pear and Maple Oatmeal takes advantage of seasonal flavors, since maple syrup is often included in fall recipes, and is so delicious that it almost tastes like dessert. On top of that, it's incredibly easy to make in the microwave, which makes it an easy breakfast to whip up on a busy weekday morning.
The trick to this recipe, which is after the jump, is to add in half of the pear before cooking and half after. The pear that is cooked will become very tender and almost melt into the oatmeal. The rest of the pear will soften only slightly from the heat when it is added just before serving, adding a lovely texture to the cereal.
Martha Stewart has pages and pages of 
Open-face sandwiches
It just occurred to me that I've never had a pie that has more than one fruit in it. I've had dozens (if not a hundred) apple pies over the years, blueberry pie, cherry pie (not a big fan), and pies filled with other foods such as custard and pecan. But I've never had a pie that combined two fruits before.
J Winery Pear Liqueur is 30% abv. / 60 proof. When I was researching this liqueur I found out an interesting story about how it came about. In 1995 the present day Cellar Master of J Winery, Tom Meeker, was playing around with fermenting pears, on the grounds that would later become J Winery and Vineyard. This pear juice was slowly fermented to full dryness and then twice distilled in a copper alembic still, to produce a pear brandy that was 50% abv. / 100 proof. The pear brandy was then laid down in French Limousin oak barrels for ten years to age and was basically forgotten about. Then a couple of years ago J Winery's Winemaker, Oded Shakked, purchased the distilled pear brandy for the company J Wine to use. It was then blended with de-ionized (rain) water and liquid sugar to make the liqueur. The liqueur was then cold stabilized and aged for six more months before bottling earlier this year.
Mathilde makes 100% natural, 100% hand picked fruit liqueurs from their French family recipes that are over 100 years old. The Pear liqueur is 18% abv / 36 proof and is a very light yellow, gold in color. The aroma is that of pears that are at the peak of ripeness as if they had been sitting on your counter all week slowly becoming more and more aromatic. This is a light bodied liqueur that is on the pleasurably sweet end of the spectrum, and is crammed full of the essence of ripe pears. I'm drinking it chilled from a snifter and it's like biting into an icy pear so ripe and honeyed that the pear just disintegrates and bursts in your mouth with a splash of sweet nectar. 
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