Ukrainian Dried Smoked Pears

Another recipe that really drew my interest in Olia Hercules' book, Summer Kitchens, was for pears that were dried and then smoked.  

ISBN 978-1-68188-570-4

The recipe is on page 62.  It is as simple as the title says, with the challenge, perhaps, to get them smoked.  

Dried Smoked Pears

 

4 1/2 pounds Bartlett pears, cut in half lengthwise, cores and stems removed

Lay the pears, cut side up, on baking sheets lined with baking parchment and put them in a very low oven - the warming oven of a Rayburn or Aga is ideal - until they are completely dried, about 3 days.  Check on them every so often, swapping the sheets around so the pears dry evenly. As they dry, the pears will shrivel and develop a caramelized chewiness - any juice that oozes onto the baking parchment will taste like pear caramel.

Transfer the dried pears to wire racks, placing them cut side up.  If you have a cold-smoker, you can then cold-smoke the pears for 18 hours.  Alternatively, you can hot-smoke the pears over oak or fruit wood chips on a barbecue for about an hour or so.

Store the pears in lidded jars at room temperature - they will last for many months.

My Notes

Most of my Bartlett pears were yellow.  Ripe, but not soft.  Just right, I hope.  I tasted a bit of one and it was very sweet.

It was easy to cut them in half and then to use the tip of a spoon to remove the cores and stems.

This is about half of the half pears.

The oven was preheated to "Warm", which is about 170 degrees F.  I noted the time when the trays went in so I could see about how long it would really take for them to dry.

They smelled so good!  They made my mouth water every time I walked by the kitchen.

After about 14 hours of drying, the pears looked like this:

The kitchen still smelled wonderful!

I didn't swap the sheets around because my oven runs a fan to circulate the air.

I took them out of the oven for a few hours while I used it for other purposes.  Then they went back in, no worse for wear.  All the drying halves were consolidated onto one tray.

After 24 hours

After 38 hours

After 48 hours, I turned them over to make sure the bottoms dried.

At 60 hours, I turned them back.  Here they are at 72 hours, when I considered them "done:"

I cut one open and tasted part of it.

The inside looked spongy.  It seemed dry all the way through.  While warm, the pears were very soft.  Once cooled, they were stiff.

I could taste a pear flavor, but it also tasted cooked, maybe even a little burnt.  Perhaps I over-dried them, or I had the temperature too hot.  Or maybe I got it just right!

The next step is to smoke them.  I want to hot-smoke them myself, using my propane grill.  

Hot Smoking

I removed one grate from the grill and put it on top of the others to provide a circulating zone around the pears.  Then I placed the pear halves on it, cut side up, and spaced so they did not touch each other.  I also made sure none of the pears were too close to the two fire areas.

One small piece of pear was withheld from the smoking so I could try a before-and-after taste comparison.

I used applewood chips that were soaked in water for 15 minutes, then drained.  I also had a premade cup with applewood chips in it, so I used that, too.  The fire under the chips was at full until the smoke started being produced enough to see, then I turned it down to low.  My reading said subtlety is best when smoking food.  

I used "that much" wood chips.

See the smoke?

The lid was closed.  The timer was set for 1 hour, and I waited.  I did check on them occasionally to make sure the smoke was still coming out, as I wasn't sure if I put in enough chips.  

I noticed that the temperature inside the grill's box was pretty hot, enough to cook the pears, at about 350 to 400 degrees F.  I hoped that wasn't a problem.

Also, the smoke smelled lovely!  Some of the scent was on my hands and it was a great perfume.

After the allotted time, I took the pear halves off the grates and brought them inside to cool.

The Verdict

No visible difference that I can tell.

Smell test:

I could smell the smoke on the still-warm smoked pear and that was different from the non-smoked piece I kept aside.

Taste test:

I ate a small piece of the smoked pear.  The smoke flavor was very subtle, but there.  There was no burnt flavor.  After I let the piece soften in my mouth for several minutes, I was able to chew it carefully.  The pear flavor was still there.  I liked it but would not consider this an eat-out-of-hand item.  I would like to try it in a recipe.

A small piece of the unsmoked pear still had the pear flavor.  It did have that "burnt" element to it, which I was not fond of.  It amazes me that smoking could take that away!  It definitely did not taste even the slightest bit smoky.  This tells me the smoking made a difference.

Ms. Hercules tells us:

These pears are usually added to borsch or uzvar.  They are very intensely flavored; just a half a pear is enough to impart a sweet smokiness to pork, duck, pheasant, or lamb stews.

Uzvar is a beverage and is consider classic Ukrainian.  It it typically dried fruit soaked or simmered in water (or birch water!).  It can be sweetened, often with sugar or honey, and sometimes spices are added.  The fruit is strained out and the flavored liquid is consumed.  Ms. Hercules offers a recipe in her book.

Fruit added to a meat stew is one of my favorites, and recipes are all over the internet for dried fruit with meat.  I will take Ms. Hercules' advice and make sure I use just one half of a pear to add that sweet, smoky flavor, unless the recipe calls for more.  I imagine it should be chopped into comfortably bite-sized pieces, possibly after it has cooked and before serving. 

I look forward to trying the smoked pears in a recipe.  Either one from this book or a stew of my own design.  

Pear Patina -- A Roman Empire Dessert Custard

I have acquired several Roman Empire recipe books over the years but the one I am attracted to the most was purchased in England and written by Sally Grainger.

ISBN 1-903018-44-7

I first wrote about it here, where I tried her recipe for modern day liquamen, a fish sauce used in many, many Roman dishes.  I stand behind my previous statement that the recipes she redacts are reasonable for the modern kitchen and the modern palate.  This recipe, a "fruit-based egg custard flavored with cumin" made me doubt that just a little, although her comments assured me that this "has been one of my more popular dishes at dinner parties and at reenactment demonstrations".

You may wonder why I doubted.  The answer is

the addition of fish sauce to a dessert always causes consternation until it is tasted.  Anyone who saw the television series What the Romans did for us with Adam Hart-Davies may possibly remember it was called a 'fishy custard.'  They gave it this name because they couldn't get past the fish sauce and see how delicious the other ingredients (honey, raisin wine) could be.

So I put my trust in Ms. Grainger and went ahead with the patina.

Pear patina, Apicius 4, 2, 35

1 1/2 lb Conference pears
200 ml red wine
50 ml passum  (see my notes, below)
2 tbsp clear honey
1 tbsp olive oil
1 - 2 tbsp fish sauce
4 eggs
1 tsp cumin
generous freshly ground black pepper

Fish sauce on the right

Peel and core the pears and chop them roughly.  Cook them till soft in the wine and passum.  Pass the whole mixture through a sieve or process it until smooth.  Add the honey, olive oil, fish sauce and 4 eggs and beat smooth again.  Dry-roast the cumin and grind to a fine powder.  Add it to the custard, then season with black pepper.  Pour into a greased casserole dish and bake for 20 minutes, or until it sets, in a moderate oven (375 degrees F, 190 degrees C, mark 5).  Serve warm with a final sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper.

My Notes

I did not have passum, which she describes as

a dessert or raisin wine made with grapes that were either allowed to shrivel on the vine or dried on rush mats.  More sweet must, from other grapes that had not been dried, was used to aid the pressing of the fruit. ... It is not a process we can duplicate but there are modern varieties of sweet wine that correspond to this. ... Any very sweet dessert wine such as a heavy muscat or a heavier Sauternes will also do.  Passum could either be dark or pale as long as it has that raisin flavour.

I had looked around for something like that but wasn't certain that I was getting the right type.  My flash of insight was to use a sweet Chardonnay (but not too sweet; I knew my dinner guests!) and to add dried raisins to simmer with the pears.

My latest visit to the local farmers market provided me with some very bumpy but lovely Bartlett pears. I used two (not both pictured) to get to 1 1/2 pounds.



The fish sauce was my latest rendition of reduced grape juice and dark fish sauce in a 1-to-2 ratio.  Yes, it tasted fishy on its own but I trusted the recipe and even used two full tablespoons.

The soft pears, raisins, and wine mix were pureed in my blender.  They were still hot from the cooking so I worried a bit about putting in the eggs and having them cooked right there.  However I didn't waste any time getting the eggs, honey, olive oil, and fish sauce put into the blender and processing the mixture until smooth.

I'm very glad I roasted the cumin seeds and ground them.  They smelled good.

A word of caution:  my blender jar holds five cups and it was very full.  I put the lid on and held it tight while processing the whole mix.  If I hadn't, there would have been patina mix all over the kitchen!   For the cumin and pepper, I mostly stirred it with a spoon and then lightly tapped the button to complete the mixing.  I probably should have put it into my food processor instead.

Too full!  Hang on tight!

I used a large casserole dish so the resulting patina was thin.

A pretty pink puddle

The custard was set after the recommended 20 minutes.  I let it cool a little while we ate dinner.

The surface looks almost bread-like

The Verdict

I served small pieces to my three guest tasters because it was so different.  Everyone liked it, including the person who does not normally eat desserts.

Visually it was pink (from the red wine) and lightly bumpy in texture, and it smelled spicy and sweet.

Looks like a pink brownie.

Each bite was a complex taste experience.  The cumin and pepper were there and needed to be there but did not announce themselves as distinct flavors.  Just a lovely spicy note.  I could taste the honey very clearly but my guest tasters didn't without thinking about it.  The pear flavor was dominant for me and I was glad.  The custard part came across as the right base to present the other flavors and stayed in the background.  No, none of us tasted anything fishy.  Just very, very good.

Fruity, spicy, creamy (with the crunch that pears bring), with just the right amount of umami to make the flavor deep.  I loved it!

One guest thought I should have used a smaller casserole dish, to make the patina thicker.  I agree although the thin version was certainly lovely.

Another guest told me he did not like the texture.  He does not like creamy foods much (like ice cream, and yet we are still friends) but prefers the creamy to have chewy or crunchy with it.  So we discussed options and agreed that a topping of chopped, toasted almonds would have been a stellar addition.  I would serve a bowl of the nuts on the side to allow my guests to choose.

There were leftovers, which I tried rewarmed -- very good, almost better than the first time -- and cold, which was also lovely.  Sometimes I put pepper on top and sometimes not.  Still very excellent.

Yes, success.  I would do it again.  An intriguing flavor mix with just enough fruity pear flavor to make it seem like a dessert.

Wardyns in Syruppe

Wardyns (wardens) are a type of pear and were used often in medieval and Elizabethan times.  From what I gather from reading a lot, the original wardyns are either a variety that has been lost or has just been renamed.  Some sources say it is the name of any long-keeping pear that is good for cooking.

I have a reference that this receipt is found in the Harliean manuscript, a 15th century book on cooking.  

I haven't found the specific receipt yet but have made this enough times to know it without the book.

    pears  -- you want a variety that
                 holds up under cooking

    red wine

    honey

    pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves

(You can see the two types of pears; I ended up just using the ones on the right because they were ripe and the others weren't ripe enough.  I also used Grains of Paradise for the pepper.)

If you are serving a small number, then slice the pears in half.  Remove the core and stem.  If you are serving many, slice the pears into large, bite-sized pieces.  For these pieces, you may wish to remove the skin, too.

Flavor the red wine with honey and spices.  Add pears and simmer gently until tender.  

The pears right after they were put into the wine mixture

Pears after they simmered for awhile

Serve warm or cool.  

Notes:  You don't need measurements here because they depend on how sweet the pears are, how the wine tastes (sweet or dry?), and how you like the spices.  I love ginger with this dish and cinnamon is good, too.  And how much honey do you like?  You can use sugar instead but I think honey adds some depth to the flavor.

So put in what you think is right, stir like mad, then taste the wine syrup.  Do you like it?  Keep in mind that the spices should be stronger than you want because the flavor will soften a bit with cooking and the pears don't soak up their flavor that much.  But the sweetness level should be comfortable to your tongue.

Then you have to consider how long to cook this.  If your pears are very ripe, as these were, and quickly get mushy when cooked, then cook them over a very low heat so the pears have time to soak up the wine and flavorings before they get soft.

If the pears are firm you can cook them at a higher heat but really you don't want to if you can avoid it.  The longer the pear slices sit in the warm wine syrup, the more flavor they absorb.   

Here's what they looked like after they had cooked long enough that I was afraid they would turn to mush if I let them cook any longer:

You can see that the wine soaked in just a little way into the pear.  This will still taste good but I like it better when the red has gone much deeper into the pear slice.  If you make them in advance, you can store them in the wine syrup and they will absorb more of the flavor.

People love these warm or cool, especially if some of the spices stick to the outside, as happened here.  

Once when I had dinner in a restaurant in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I was eating a salad when the most wonderful flavor burst into my mouth.  I investigated to find that the salad had wine soaked pear slices in it. Wow!  It was wonderful!  So the next time I made them at home, I saved some, sliced them thinly, and put them into my salad.  Yes, it is good!  Chilling the pears makes them firm and easy to grab with your fork.

I mentioned above that I used Grains of Paradise in place of pepper.  They are an unusual spice that I recently acquired and was excited to try.  They are not related to pepper but have a peppery kick.  

They come as a whole spice and then you grind them up to use them.  

Grains of Paradise, whole

Grains of Paradise, ground

The websites I reviewed before using them said they tend to lose some of their peppery bite when cooked, so plan accordingly for the recipe.

When you are done cooking all the pears you plan on using, don't be too quick to throw out the wine syrup.  It will have a lovely flavor from all the ingredients and from the pears, and you can probably find someone who would like to drink it.  It is sort of a fruity Hippocras, that sweetened, spiced wine drink that the Romans loved and still showed up in medieval cookbooks 1200 years later.

The Verdict:  Success!  This dish always pleases the crowd and is easy to do.  Just make sure your pears are ripe before slicing them!