Overwhelmed by Autumn Pears

Pears in our back garden

The pears are everywhere.  We had been keeping watch all summer for the moment when the pear tree in the back garden would provide us with luscious, ripe ready-to-eat pears. 

When the birds started pecking at the fruit, we knew it wouldn't be long until the crop would be harvest ready. Mama birds must not teach baby birds to clean their plates, because birds never eat the whole fruit (which I wouldn't begrudge them), but they take random bites out of many pieces of fruit.  It is always a race- who will get to the fruit first, the birds or the humans?

Wayne tries to convince me to pick the fruit when it is not quite ripe.  He prefers crunchy pears; I don't.  So I leave them on the tree until they are soft and wonderfully sweet.  Unfortunately, this is also the point at which the pear tree decides to start dropping its fruit.

I wandered out to the back garden recently and found the ground littered with pears, none of which were edible because they were already rotting or had telltale signs of bird bites.  I rushed into the house for a bowl to pick and save as many pears as possible, the purpose for which I hadn't a clue.

As I stood on tiptoe to search the tree for edible pears, a large pear came loose and bonked me right on top of the head.  Should have worn a helmet for this dangerous work, I suppose.  In a few minutes, my bowl was full of more pears than we could ever eat in one season.

Surely old reliable Joy of Cooking would have pear recipes.  They have recipes for everything under the sun. I didn't want a labor intensive recipe, just something to get those pears off of the kitchen counter.  There were recipes for pear turnovers, but I would have to make dough; several recipes had verbs like freezing, canning, and pickling, which was not what I had in mind for an afternoon's activity; and one was for Pear Pandowdy, which suggested that I should read about Slumps and Grunts on p. 693 before I made it (Does that sound good to you?).

Stuffed pears in baking dish

In desperation, I checked out a recipe called "Stuffed Pears," which looked doable.  And the result was an elegant looking dessert.  Here is the original Joy of Cooking recipe with my adjustments. 

Take four pears, peeled, cored and halved, mix together 1/2 cup honey and 2 tablespoons lemon juice, place the pear halves in a baking dish, and coat them with the honey mixture.  I had red chile honey bought in New Mexico this summer, so I used that to give the dish a southwestern taste.  

Next step is to mix together 1/4 cup golden raisins, 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts, 2 tablespoons Splenda, and 1 tablespoon lemon juice.  I filled the cavities of the pear halves with the mixture and dusted them with more Splenda and cinnamon.  I covered the dish with foil and baked it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, then uncovered it and cooked about 15 minutes longer.  The pears were supposed to be basted once or twice with the cooking juice, but who wants to open a hot oven when the outside temperature is still in the 80s?

Stuffed pears can be served at any temperature or refrigerated and reheated.  I thought the dish had an autumn taste.  Next time, I may find an excuse to top the pears with Ben and Jerry's vanilla ice cream.  

Have you tried Anasazi Beans?

I find ‘autumn’ to be a more appealing word than ‘fall.’ Maybe it’s because ‘fall’ has other meanings, and autumn can only mean one thing – the season between summer and winter. 

That being said, when I visited my son in New Zealand several years ago,  I had to revise my mental associations with autumn.  In the Southern Hemisphere autumn ushers in the warm season.  There it will soon be time for picnics and sports on the beach.  I remember a Christmas Day on a beach near Auckland NZ, slathering on sunscreen because of the strength of the sun’s rays.

But in much of the Northern Hemisphere, the word autumn brings to mind colorful falling leaves, frost on pumpkins, and plans for Thanksgiving celebrations, the traditional images.  In the Desert Southwest, we put our own special interpretation on autumn.

It is now mid-September, and trees and grass are greener than ever and will remain so until mid or late November. Flowering plants and bushes show their appreciation of the new season by putting on new growth and actually blooming. The 100 degree days, and even 90 degree days, belong to summer.  The mercury still hits 80-something in the daytime, but occasionally I catch just the hint of a cool breeze, the first sign that autumn has arrived.  Mornings and evenings are perfect for outdoor walks or dining.

I would name autumn as my favorite season and also the most melancholy of seasons.  Where did the promise of summer go?  Why am I now applauding summer's demise and welcoming the cooler weather with open arms?  Will autumn slip away like summer and send me searching in back of the closet for a warm sweater?  Surely not, I console myself.

Autumn recipes reflect the harvest bounty.  I can bear to heat up the oven again to cook apple crisp, green chile quiche, and pear coffee cake .  I’m happy to simmer lintel soup or friijoles de olla (pinto beans in a pot) all day on the stove top.  Here is one of my recent cooking successes (we won't mention the failures). Let me know how you like it!

Anasazi Beans

I am embarrassed to admit that I paid double for my first bag of Anasazi beans.  The cute little bag made of burlap in a grocery store in Ruidoso, New Mexico was designed to attract the uninformed tourist. I took the the bait.  Several weeks later, I found a package of Anasazi beans in the produce section of a local grocery store for a much more reasonable price.

Here's how I cooked the Anasazi beans.

Take 2 cups of dry beans, rinse them, cover with water, bring to boil on stove, and let boil for about 15 minutes.  Careful!  I recently let the water boil away and ended up with burned beans.  And if you have never smelled burned beans....

Then I set the beans aside for an hour.  When it's time to cook the beans, I add more water, about a fourth of a roughly chopped onion, and a large chopped garlic clove.  I bring the beans to a boil again, then turn them down to simmer and cook for several hours.

At some point in the cooking process, I walk by the stove and add a heaping teaspoon of New Mexico red chile powder and a dash of ground black pepper.  The salt I leave until the end.  It is as usual - salt to taste.

You may be able to tell from the casual directions in this recipe that beans are one of the few dishes I can cook without a detailed recipe.  I hope that you will add your own touches to this easy recipe.

  

Tomatillo Sauce - Finally!

Have you ever passed by those small green tomato-looking vegetables in the produce department and wondered what they were? I have, many times. And my husband, Wayne, has asked me the same question innumerable times, "Do you know what these little green things are used for?" No, I didn't, but now I do. They are tomatillos.

Tomatillos resemble small green tomatoes but are covered with a husk. The husk is easily removed. They are a member of the nightshade family and are often used in Mexican cuisine to make green sauces. 

Craving a new taste in salsas recently, I pulled an old cookbook off the shelf,The Great Salsa 

Book by Mark Miller (1994) (ISBN 0-89815-517-7). Why had I never used this book before? 

The pictures of 100 salsas, each in a small decorative dish, were seductive.

. 

This is how I made Tomatillo Salsa Verde with Avocado. Starting with 15 tomatillos, I removed the husks and rinsed the tomatillos under running water, then chopped them into medium size pieces. Into the blender they went. Then I chopped three chiles serranos, leaving seeds in, and added them to the blender. (I am a wimp, so I put on disposable gloves to handle the chiles.)

Next step was to add a bunch of fresh cilantro and two tablespoons of fresh lime juice. I don’t cheat here. I buy small limes and squeeze them with my Mexican lime squeezer. A teaspoon of sugar and one of salt completed the ingredients. I hit the purée button.

When I poured the salsa out of the blender, the taste was great, unusual really, but the texture! Oh my. My salsa was watery, nothing like the picture in the cookbook. Then I noticed that there was a similar recipe in the book that called for an avocado to be added. I poured off some of the liquid, chopped an avocado, dumped everything back in the blender, and puréed again. Ah, much better. This salsa not only tasted great but looked appealing also.

We ate it on everything – chips, corn tortillas, tacos. I even caught Wayne dipping a spoon into it. I think the salsa would even be good on rice or a baked potato. And it is healthy (well, except for the chips we dipped it with, I suppose). The taste was tart and a pleasant change from our usual green chile and jalapeño salsas. And for less adventurous taste buds, the amount of chile could be reduced, but I liked the slight picante aftertaste.

Now I am remembering that I tried to grow tomatillos in the garden many years ago without knowing what I was going to do with the crop. But there was no crop. All I found growing were empty husks. Later I learned that several tomatillo plants are needed for pollination.

Only 98 more salsas from the Mark Miller book to go. Do you have a favorite salsa? If so, I would love to add it to the list.. 

The gorditas may have changed me into a gordita.

This year was the 50th anniversary of the Labor Day celebration at St. Anthony's Seminary in El Paso, Texas. Having lived in El Paso all of my life, I decided it was time to finally find out what has made their celebration such a local tradition.

And I found out.  It was those famous gorditas. A gordita is a specialty snack, often served at church bazaars and other outdoor celebrations.  A gordita (which also means "little fat female" in Spanish- hope you caught the joke in the title) is made by forming a corn meal cake about the size of a hamburger patty, frying it, cutting it partially open, and stuffing it with cooked and seasoned ground meat, lettuce and tomatoes. 

Always concerned with my expanding waistline, I can usually discipline myself to pass up the gordita booth. But, this was a holiday, and after all, once in fifty years.....  

Wayne and I took our paper carton of gorditas, found a seat with other diners at a bench and table provided on a large, grassy rectangle, and enjoyed our lunch.  I was trying to be a dainty eater, but Wayne said, "Just let the grease drip on the grass."  So I did.

A variety of music was playing over loudspeakers, from old-fashioned rock and roll to Mexican favorites.This was a family affair.  I'll bet some families had been attending for several generations. One small boy near us was a two-fisted eater - an ice cream cone in one hand and a hot dog in the other.  He alternated bites without skipping a beat.

Our hunger satisfied, we were able to focus on the other offerings of the fair, which is an annual event to raise money for the seminary. Wayne bought a raffle ticket for a new Chevy, I checked out plants for sale, and we peeked in at the rummage sale, but it was quite crowded.

In another area, game booths for children were set up.  I saw my favorite from a long ago childhood - the fishing pond.  I could never win anything at those throwing games, but I think I remember that no child went away unhappy from the fishing pond.  Is that what you remember also?  Someone asked Wayne if he knew where the cake walk was being held.  That brought back memories of those luscious iced cakes waiting for a lucky winner.  Do you suppose  the cakes are still homemade these days?

Walking on the grounds of religious institutions is always a pleasure for me.  They often have beautiful landscaping and nooks with benches for quiet contemplation. I can escape from the modern world for a short time. 

I'm looking forward to next year's excuse to eat gorditas.  St. Anthony's Labor Day Festival is a super way to end the summer.