Tag Archives: garden

  • Spiced Pear Cardamom Butter

    October 23, 2012

    31 Comments

    Spiced Pear Cardamom Butter.

    As we mentioned in last week’s weekly cocktail post, we sometimes find pears to be a challenging ingredient. We like to eat our Comice pears out of hand, but when we got to our “mystery” pears we were a bit stumped. Part of the issue is that we have no idea what our “mystery” pears are. The tree is over 50 years old, and it has tremendous yield, but we have no other data. And since there are literally over 3000 varieties of pear, it “could” be almost anything. (And since Silicon Valley was an agricultural area before tech came, we do have all sorts of backyard heirloom fruit trees- so we mean “almost anything”).

    But, like many food mysteries, the proof is in the eating. We tried our mystery pears and they have a hard, crisp texture and a light, sweet flavor similar to apples with a touch of vanilla. A good pear, but not meant for eating fresh. After a little research, we decided the mystery pears were somewhere between a Bosc and a Concorde pear. Both are varieties best known for baking or canning. And since our mystery pears had light flavor, we went for a canning option and decided to make spiced pear butter.

    The advantage of making pear butter is that you can cook the pears to concentrate their flavor, and you can vary the cooking time and spices to match the pears you have. Since our pears had light, sweet, apple flavor, we chose to make Spiced Pear Cardamom Butter. The recipe is adapted from “Tart and Sweet“, Kelly Geary and Jessie Knadler’s excellent canning and pickling book. The recipe combines pears and a strong dose of winter spices; cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. This may seem like overkill, but the pears carry the spices well and the result is very tasty. The spiced pear butter tastes like spicy apple butter but with honey and vanilla notes to go with the spices. Great on toast at breakfast, and certainly worth making.

    And making pear butter is easier than most canning and jamming. Simply peel and core the pears, then cut into 1/2 inch pieces (the pears are firm and easy to handle). Then add to a pot with a bit of lemon juice, a dash of salt, a cup of sugar and the spices. Cook for about an hour, mashing the pears occasionally, and then blend in a blender of food processor and return to the pot for a little extra cooking. You can choose the consistency you like. Then process the pear butter, following your standard steps. The only issue with this recipe is the pears themselves, they vary widely in density and water content. The recipe says you will get about seven half pints of pear butter, but you may get eight you may get five. We got five. But simply taste the pear butter as you make it and then process when you are ready. You will still have plenty of pear butter.

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  • The Surprise Harvest: Inspiration And Friendship

    October 22, 2012

    19 Comments

    One of the many pleasant surprises we have from blogging is the amount of inspiration and new friends we discover. We started blogging as a way to challenge ourselves to be better gardeners and cooks, but found so much more. As always, we are very grateful to everyone who visits us, but also to everyone who takes the time to share their photos, recipes and cocktails. We learn new things and meet amazing people (from all over the world) almost every day, which is as close to a definition of “happiness” as we can find.

    One area where we do fall short (and there are plenty) is responding to the occasional blogger award nominations we receive. We are grateful and apologize for the slow response. The “awards” that are out there an interesting deal, and we know some bloggers like them and some don’t. While it may be a bit “spammy” and a way to drive discovery, it is a great wat to discover new blogs. And some of these blogs really rock. On balance, there are never enough good blogs too read. So here are a few awards:

    • Cooking with Corinna, a very good home-cooking blog nominated us for a 7×7 link award. Thanks!
    • Taste of Wintergreen, Lindy’s excellent seasonal cooking blog (and we like seasonal cooking blogs), nominated us for a Liebster Award. Thanks!
    • And South By Southeast, Betsy’s lovely cooking blog from the Low Country nominated us for a One Lovely Blog Award. Before settling in California, we both had ties to the Low Country, one of our favorite places. Betsy’s blog supplies inspiration and fond memories. We are very grateful.
    • Finally, it wasn’t an award but Michael at the Liquid Culture Project, gave us a kind mention on his cocktail blog. Michael is doing some of the best writing in cocktails right now (IMHO) and the mention was a real treat. We made the Hot Toddies from one of Michael’s recent posts and they were one of the better drink’s we’ve had (and we’ve had a few).

    So each of these awards has “rules’ on how to respond, but we don’t love rules and hope that we can respond with a few fun facts, a few good sites and some photos. (And good, if somewhat lazy, intentions).

    Fun Facts, Quotes and Miscellany:

    • We love the SF Giants, but this postseason is killing us. Five elimination games is exhausting. At least they are still in it.
    • “From the ashes of disaster come the roses of success”-  Chitty-Chitty, Bang, Bang.
    • Pretty easy to find those ashes in our garden and kitchen sometimes. Yo, where’s my #$%@ roses?
    • We are being lazy about our winter garden. Hard to plant when you still have tomatoes (that is today’s excuse).
    • We are starting to improve many recipes by taking ingredients out. This doesn’t always work, but try it, you may be surprised.

    Good Sites We Like:

    And even though fall is here and the rains have come, the flowers are still blooming. Here are a few to share: Continue reading →