It is that time of year again, the Asian Pear tree is laden with fruit and I am torn between chucking it all in the green bin and doing something useful with it. There are already mounds of decaying pears laying in the jasmine, so I should probably start doing something about that, and with the loads of fruit on the tree.
So far I have learned Asian pears make lousy sauce, the consistency is grainy and the flavor is nothing special. I tried making pear sauce muffins, but the effort of making mediocre sauce just to make mediocre muffins seems silly. In previous years I’ve given them away by the bagful at the boys’ school, but they’re rather hit-and-miss, some people love them, others love to hate them (they often have a tree of their own).
This year I have started an Asian Pears board on Pintrest, and I have several ideas of what to do with them. Most of what I’ve pinned uses one, maybe two pears, but I’m hopefully I’ll come across something that calls for one or two pounds of them that’s worth repeating. I’m also considering saving my laundry pennies and getting a food dehydrator (and some accessories) to turn them into easy snacks.
I’m going to try a few of my pins and see how they work out, I have several more pinned, so we will see where this goes.
- Pickled Asian Pears with Lemon via Saveur came highly recommended from neighbors of ours who also have an Asian Pear tree, apparently it is a “great way” to use lots of pears and I already have canning materials from other canning projects
- Greens with warm breaded goat cheese and fig balsamic via the Organic Kitchen is probably going to be used more as an inspiration post than an exact step-by-step, I suspect it will go the way of apples on on greens with pecans and goat cheese and eventually end up chopped, sprinkled and piled, because warming, candying, etc. gets to be too much work for a salad
- Ricotta Stuffed Asian Pears with Cinnamon Recipe via The Culinary Life looks promising, and I think I have everything on hand most of the time
- Dried 5-Spice Asian Pears via Against All Grain looks promising, I may try and dehydrate them in the oven
- Asian Pear Sorbet via Out of Thyme will likely be made into popsicles because I have limited freezer space for my ice-cream bowl.
- Lemon Sorbet with Asian Pears via Mel’s Creative Corner it only uses one pear, and uses coconut water, so I’m on the fence as to if I should bother making it or not — see also above comment about limited freezer space
I suspect some of these may end up as Pintrest Fails, but I’m hopeful. There are now far more uses for Asian Pears than there were a few years ago when I first started looking, and they’re appearing more regularly at the grocery store — the grocery store ones are individually wrapped in little cushy mesh to keep them from getting damaged, and are about twice the size of mine – they probably get regularly watered and properly tended.
