This recipe is what I refer to as a “tumble along”. It all started with a unexptected bag of pears from our friend Gail Cox, which she harvested off of her tree in Arkansas. In the bag that she handed me were a half-dozen hard green pears with gorgeous obtuse shapes and the sweetest flesh. Then a day later came fragrant snips of rosemary from Susan Pierce’s garden, my neighbor across the street (I’m trying to root it now so I can grow my own crop- any advice?). Then finally a hunk of blue cheese I had just purchased on our last trip to Dallas begged to get in on the act.
The fun part is the mental matrix of how to play with these foods. I rolled around the flavors in my mind, pulling them this way and that, into a cold dish, then over to a warm…. Eventually I came around to a version of a savory tart, which lead to how to include dried fruits and nuts- and then how to enhance that gorgeous blue cheese…. and then I thought about shape…. [Read more…] about Fruited Nut Paste with Pan Roasted Pears