It’s apple picking season! Every year we go to a u-pick orchard and bring home about 40 pounds of apples. We went early this year, and the honeycrisps and macintoshes were ripe. I’ll have to go back to get cortlands and my favorite, the macouns. However, the orchard did have four trees full of bosc pears. When you get them fresh off of the tree, the skin is thin and the fruit is juicy – nothing like the pears found mid-winter in the supermarket!
Bosc aren’t the best baking pears, but you can gussy them up a little and they’re delicious. I like to make a batch of baked pears, and then eat them for breakfast with yogurt. Baked pears (or, use this same template for apples) are as easy as can be. Get out a baking dish. Core the pears(did you know there’s a simple tool for this task?) and set them upright in the baking dish. Then fill the cores with good stuff, like dried fruit, or granola and a bit of crystalized ginger. Put in a cinnamon stick and a small dab of butter. Drizzle honey or maple syrup over the pears. Pour in some apple cider so that the pears are sitting in about a half-inch of liquid.
Here they are about to go in the oven:
Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until soft through.
Well, I ventured out of my box and bought some bosc pears. They aren’t quite ripe yet but I can’t wait to taste them. The produce man said they were sweeter than the d’anjous and those other awful pears that are yellow and always look anemic in the store. Terry, your pears are pretty enough for a cooking magazine cover!
Thanks, Donna :) Although pears seem to have shelf-life like apples, I think they’re more like peaches – you really do need to get them local and in season.
here in Perry Utah it is Peach time!!! I have bottled, dried, and froze so many peaches! I assure you I don’t have any desire to eat another one too soon! However now it is tomato day for me….I’ll say the same thing about them by the end of the weekend! This area of Utah is famous for all the fruit. We also have many acres of watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and squash. Fruit farmers around here are busy! And so are us wives with all the food prepping and storage going on…..