Spare pears

A friend of mine mentioned recently she had loads of pears rotting her garden, as they dropped from the tree. Super keen foragers, Chris and I, traipsed up to Jen’s with our big African basket. We arrived to find it wasn’t actually Jen’s tree, but a neighbours.

After collecting all the dropped pears with cooking potential, we picked a few more from the reachable braches and headed home with our loot. We’ve enjoyed sliced pear and cheese, and pear and blue cheese salad over the last few days. The Italian proverb “al contadino non far sapere quanto è buono il formaggio con le pere” (don't let the peasant know how good cheese is with pears) springs to mind.

Lastly, we also enjoyed pear and almond crumble (pictured below). Here’s the recipe:

Recipe

5 large pears, peeled and sliced

A handful of ground almond

A handful of sliced almonds

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup plain flour

50 grams butter

Mascarpone and honey (to serve)

Simmer the sliced pears for 5 minutes. In the meantime, mix the flour, ground almond, sugar and butter together. Use your finger tips to work the mixture until you get the consistency of bread crumbs. Once you’ve achieved this drop in the sliced almonds. Once the pears are cooked, drain and arrange in a baking dish. Place the crumble mixture over the top, spreading evenly and covering completely. Cook at 180 degrees for around 20mins, or until the crumble is browned.

Serve hot, with mascarpone mixed with honey.       

Thanks to Asheline Appleton for the excellent photo, berries and dinner!