Why Hank Likes Snow Days

As one might imagine, when I have an unplanned day off from teaching, I go to the kitchen! Today’s snow day was rather unexpected, and we recently got a box of pears from Linda, Al, and Sophie, my sister and her family, a sweet memory of our father who used to send us a box every year.

I had been looking at pear recipes, and from a long list I decided to make a pear, prosciutto, and blue cheese tart; pear, walnut, and blue cheese madeleines; and a pear bread with chocolate chunks. And all that makes my husband, Hank, very, very happy! Besides all this, we had a pork, sweet potato, and pear stew for dinner, along with a salad with blue cheese and pears. It’s been a very peary day!

The tart was out of one of my cookbooks, and the flavors were wonderful, although I was not happy with how the puff pastry worked as the crust. That’s what the recipe called for, and I had some puff pastry in the freezer so I decided to try it. But next time I’ll use a regular savory pie crust. I scattered cut prosciutto and crumbled blue cheese and chèvre on the bottom of the tart, and arranged pear wedges on top. I beat three eggs with about ¼ cup heavy cream, salt, and pepper, and poured that over the pears. It took about 30 minutes in a 350° oven to set.

 The madeleines were baked in a mini muffin tin – I don’t have a madeleine mold, and this was recommended in the recipe. It worked fine. The recipe is from Chocolate and Zucchini, and can also be found here. They were light, savory bites that we enjoyed with dinner in place of bread.

The cake is one I’ve made before, from Food 52 and can be found here. It’s worth it to get good quality chocolate chunks if you can!

(If case you’re wondering about dinner, the stew was not our favorite. We found it here on the NYTimes cooking site, but felt that the flavors didn’t stay distinct enough. As for the salad, there was no special recipe, just mixed greens, diced pear, crumbled blue cheese, and a vinaigrette.)