Pear Squash Soup

This started out as a recipe on Saveur.com, developed by Leah Koenig. Hers suggests chicken stock and crème fraiche, and it was delicious that way.  I’ve been fiddling with it and am also happy with this vegan version. If you prefer to head in the other direction, I think this could be an example of the unknown (to me) omnivore’s advice about the original Moosewood Cookbook: “Take any recipe and just add some bacon.” 

I used the sugar loaf delicata variety pictured here. Any flavorful winter squash would be fine. Do keep in mind if you have delicatas that they, like acorn squash and most pumpkins, are the same species (Cucurbita pepo) as summer squash like zucchini. They don’t hold their flavor nearly as well as the Hokkaidos, butternuts, kabochas and their ilk. So if you have a harvest of both, use the delicatas first. 

It’s also easy to have too many pears this time of year, since they tend to ripen in a rush. This could be a good recipe to make in quantity and freeze, or have friends over for Soup Night.

I just figured this one out, so it is not in the Winter Harvest Cookbook. My friends and I have decided that at my current pace of a revised edition every 20 years, the 2030 Winter Harvest will be the Winter Puree Cookbook as we’ll mostly be in our 80s. This would fit right in, not that I intend to wait that long to make it again.

Pear and Squash Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 ½ cups chopped onions or shallots (I used leeks and yellow onion)

A bout 2 cups baked winter squash.( I used the Sugar Loaf Delicata variety pictured)

About 2 cups ripe but still firm pears, peeled, cored, and chopped

About 1 cup chopped potato (Suit your taste on the peel. If you want a smoother purée, then peel it; if you like a bit more texture, just give the spud a scrub)

½ teaspoon dried or 1 teaspoon fresh thyme

1 tablespoon balsamic or red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar (the choice depends in part on how much you may want to cut the sweetness of the squash and pears)

4 cups vegetable stock

2 teaspoons miso (I used yellow miso)

1 teaspoon paprika

Salt and pepper

Maple syrup (optional)

Heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and cook 3 or 4 minutes until they are limp. Stir so they don’t stick. Add chopped potato, cook another 2 or 3 minutes, and add chopped pears for another few minutes. Onions should be soft. 

Add roasted squash, stir in thyme, add vinegar and stock, stir again, and bring to a simmer. Put miso in a small cup. Ladle out some stock and mix with the miso to liquefy. Add to the pot and simmer until potatoes and pears are completely cooked. 

Remove soup from heat and purée to taste. I used an immersion blender. Stir in salt, pepper, and paprika.

Drizzle a bit of maple syrup over each serving if you want.

Note: I nearly always roast squash no matter what the original recipe says. It’s a hassle to peel a winter squash, especially a ribby one like an acorn squash, and I like the caramelization that happens in roasting, as I’m not generally a fan of ultra-sweet vegetables.  Also, it’s much easier to deal with excess if it’s roasted. Just scoop it into a container and freeze it; that’s it. I also intend to try drying the roasted purée, an old treatment I saw somewhere. I'll report when I have more information.

Pear-shaped Prose

Pear Trees, Gustav Klimt, 1903

One afternoon in our first year in Sumas, we arrived home from some errands to see a pickup in the driveway and a man’s legs up a ladder in our pasture. The rest of him was obscured by foliage. Completely unabashed when we walked over and introduced ourselves, he said he came every year to pick from “the best Bartlett tree in Whatcom County.” Sumas was like that. Another neighbor made an annual spring visit to harvest the impressive mole hills in our front yard. She said they provided the ideal potting soil--rich loam, brought to the surface and aerated by the work of those little mole feet--and she was right.

Certainly we had pears to spare: two giant Bartletts and a couple of winter Seckels overwhelmed us annually. Pear trees can easily bear for more than a century. Ours had been going strong for more than fifty years. Compared to apples with their pruning demands, and cherries with their proneness to wind damage and disease, pears are one of less troublesome tree fruits in NW Washington.

If there are problems, they are likely to come at the other end. Few people find fresh pears as addictively snackable as cherries, and they are more fragile and keep less well than apples. In the Sumas years we dried them, baked them, canned them, made cider both hard and sweet--and most years also took wheelbarrows full of wasp-munched windfalls to the cows and the hogs. (The chickens didn’t like them much.)

Washington grows more than a third of the pears produced commercially in the U.S., mostly in the Yakima Valley. Western Washington has relatively little commercial pear presence, but lots and lots of backyard trees, including one variety, the Orcas, that was identified on Orcas Island in 1972 and is sold through Cloud Mountain Farm among other specialty nurseries.

A February pear roundup
A couple of weeks ago I bought the Washington-grown varieties available at the Food Co-op that day and took them to my journalism class at Nooksack Valley High School. As a descriptive writing exercise, the students had to describe their impressions without any “opinion words”: no yummy, yucky, gross, tasty, nasty, scrumptious, etc. “But Ms. Morgan,” wailed one sophomore. “That’s my whole vocabulary!” Herewith, a selection of their impressions:

Bosc -- tough inside, encased in thick skin, no juice, hidden flavor, it kind of reminded me of what trees smell like in the summer, crunchy, mild, slightly sweet.

D’Anjou -- bursting juice, smooth skin; dissolves in mouth, very soft, smells like leaves, grainy, very sweet

Red d’Anjou -- rough skin, calm flavor, apple tasting, not a long-lasting taste, slightly bitter, grassy at first, sweet aftertaste, grainy; leaves the tongue evaporated

Concorde -- smooth inside, thick skin, slight juice similar to Red d’anjou, you can smell the sweetness, it’s soft and a little mushy but a little grainy, Smooth and subtle.

A couple of recipes
One way to establish your “longtime local foodie” kitchen cred is to haul out your copy of the Bellingham Farmers Market Cookbook from 1981. That’s back when the market was leading a hardscrabble existence over at the bus terminal, and we decided to compile a cookbook as a fundraiser. Gretchen Hoyt of Alm Hill Gardens was on that committee (as was I), which reminds me how long Ben and Gretchen have worked to promote sustainable local farming. Other familiar names in the local food scene include Lynn Berman, Holmquist Hazelnuts and Binda Colebrook.

Like most of the recipes in that funky comb-bound volume, this one for Stuffed Pears is simple and adaptable:

Ingredients
3 pears
3 tablespoons dried fruit
2 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Instructions
Peel, halve and core pears. Mix nuts, fruit, and lemon juice and fill pear cavity. Make a light sugar syrup with the 1/2 cup of water, or cook down 1/2 cup pear juice to form a light syrup. Place pears gently in syrup. Cover pan and steam pears 10-15 minutes until tender but not mushy. (Better undercooked than overcooked.) Remove pears. Thicken syrup with cornstarch and pour over pears.

My idea of the perfect pear pairing is a Comice with Roquefort. The sweet creaminess of my favorite pear matched with the even creamier texture and pungent bite of the cheese--oh my.

Here’s a different and admittedly weird-sounding pear/cheese combo, which I borrowed from Mediterranean Harvest (with attribution) to use in Winter Harvest. It’s good.

Côte d’Azur Tart
Ingredients
1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted (you could substitute local hazelnuts)
1 1/2 cups chopped Swiss chard
2 tablespoons currants or raisins, soaked in 3 tablespoons dark rum (optional) for 20 minutes
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
pinch of black pepper
3 cups peeled, cored, and sliced firm pears, apples or a combination of the two
pastry for a double-crust, 9-inche pie

Instructions
Preheat oven to 375. Toast pine nuts or hazelnuts lightly in an ungreased skillet over medium heat and set aside.

Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a medium saucepan, add chard, and cook, covered, over medium heat for 10 minutes, Drain and squeeze out all excess water once chard is cool enough to handle. (The chardy water is a good start for a vegetable stock.) Combine all remaining ingredients except the pears/apples in a large mixing bowl, then blend in the chard.

Smooth chard mixture evenly across bottom of pie shell and cover with fruit slices. Roll out remaining dough and cover pie, pressing to join edges. Prick top crust to let steam escape. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, until crust is browned and filling firm. Cover top crust with foil if it brown before filling is ready. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Serves 6

P.S. I’m only talking about European pears in this post. I’m no expert on the Asian varieties, though I find them beautiful, and their light, crunchy flesh refreshing.