I’ll let you in on a little secret that maybe isn’t so secret: Cajeta is the food of angels. It’s essentially a milk caramel sauce, but what sets it apart from dulce de leche or confiture de lait is that it’s usually made from goat’s milk, which makes it more delicious by half, IMHO; it has a little tang and complexity the others don’t. Cajeta’s incredible on ice cream, with cookies or toast, over a simple cake, on a spoon, as a beverage (not that I’ve tried that…yet), or in a million other ways, I’m sure.

But because we have an abundance of pears in the market these days, I teamed the cajeta with crepes and topped them with, you guessed it, roasted pears. AGAIN.

I looked at a lot of cajeta recipes before starting, and most of them emphasized that you Must Stir Frequently, especially after adding the baking soda, or else! I liked Rick Bayless’s recipe because of his relaxed attitude to the whole thing and, you know, he’s Rick Bayless. So don’t worry too much when you’re making it; I just wandered into the kitchen every now and then (more frequently toward the end) to give it a stir.

Usually, cajeta would be a bit thicker than you see in the picture above, but I was in a hurry to wrap things up and skimped on the cooking time a little. It was still mind-blowingly good. And it would make a great homemade gift for the holidays, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m pretty sure the recipient would be.

recipes after the jump

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Summer’s over and so is the photography portion of the cookbook project I spent my weekends on. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate 1) completing the work, 2) the unofficial start of fall and 3) football season than with a big pot of beef & lamb chili and an over-the-top dessert. It’s a retread of the Vanilla Roasted Pears with Amaretto Mascarpone I made earlier in the year, but made this time with the courage of my convictions. And let me tell you, espresso cream is in no way a bad (or overpowering) thing.

I had no real plans to go with such a fall feast, but the pears at the farmers’ market called to me Saturday.

I was powerless against them.

Wicked, wicked pears.

Now please pardon me while I shovel more of this into my piehole.

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I’m a big mark for Patton Oswalt. Of course he’s funny, sometimes scathingly so, but what I like most about him is the degree of reflection he puts into any interview he gives. He’s been making the rounds to promote his new book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, so I caught him on a couple of podcasts recently — The BS Report with Bill Simmons and WTF with Marc Maron (which you must subscribe to, if you don’t already). Aaaaanyway, Oswalt made a great observation on The BS Report while discussing his work as a script doctor. He said he learned early on that movie remakes can be done well, provided they aren’t too faithful to the original. That if you explore the story from a tangent — and remake rather than retell — the new project isn’t so burdened and can become its own thing, possibly more interesting than the source material.

I agree fully with this approach, having experienced it repeatedly while struggling to make old favorites gluten-free. Some recipes handle the noodling better than others, but the simple fact is GF baked goods NEVER will be the same as ones made with wheat. And once I accepted that fact and moved on, I learned to love my food for what it is instead of moaning about what it can’t be.

In that spirit, I had a craving for tiramisu early in the week, wanted to make it gluten-free, and started pondering. You’d think finding an alternative to ladyfingers would be a big problem, but it really wasn’t; I stayed faithful to the original idea with mascarpone and cocoa, but remade the dessert into something new by using roasted pears as the base.

A quick search turned up a recipe for roasted pears on Smitten Kitchen, whose seal of approval is all the convincing I need to try a new dish. I sliced up both red bartlett pears and bosc, then adjusted the sugar down a bit, knowing they’d have to contend with a sweet topping later on.

When the pears came out of the oven they were perfect specimens of roasted pearhood, so even if I’d stopped there, toes would’ve curled and plates would’ve been licked. As you can see, the red bartletts were beautifully caramelized after an hour in the oven:

The boscs retained more of their juices and didn’t caramelize quite as much, but still were gorgeous and delicious in their own right:

But I just couldn’t stop there, since the milky, creamy part is what I love most about tiramisu. I didn’t want espresso in the mascarpone cream to overwhelm the delicate pears, so I worked up a rich version with amaretto and vanilla bean whipped cream instead.

Toppings were simple: I tried one version with cocoa powder and one without, but sprinkled both liberally with toasted ground almonds. I loved them equally and couldn’t choose a favorite any more than choosing between Rufus or Otis.

Success!

recipe after the jump

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Restorative.

That’s what this weekend has been for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. It began Friday with an afternoon spent wandering Tribeca searching out lonely cobblestone streets for a portrait session next weekend. I found a couple of candidates that will work wonderfully, but the best part of the afternoon was simply being alone with my thoughts, not working, not stressing, just being. 13+ hours of working and commuting each day is draining during good weeks, but has been especially brutal for the past few months with no hope of vacation between April and Christmas and deadlines upon deadlines. It really got to me.

So that simple half day meant more to me than I can say. I returned home that evening practically dancing and ready to greet the weekend. We paid our weekly visit to the farmers’ market Saturday morning where I loaded up on produce, fresh cheese and grass-fed beef, then spent the rest of the day out and about. So there was no cooking until today, really, unless you count the white chili I made last night with the remnants of our mid-week roasted chicken. It was nothing out of the ordinary — just the usual suspects with cannellini beans and some Rancho Gordo hominy (and cooking liquid) thrown in for good measure. Oh, and topped with farmer cheese and some of that green salsa from a couple of weeks ago. Yum.

I skipped the greyhound hike today to spend a little extra time cooking, so as soon as the boys left, I cranked up some bluegrass and got to work on this pear tart. I went savory instead of sweet, and finally got to try Clotilde’s olive oil tart crust (which deserves every rave review it got). It featured the goodness of caramelized onions, fresh herbs, gorgonzola, walnuts and fig vinegar. Again, nothing too out of the ordinary, but why reinvent the wheel when this combo is so very, very good?

But the first bite proved it was still missing a little something, so I sprinkled it with a little fleur de sel and grated a little Balinese long pepper over it. Yes, I sound like a brat, but this pepper is amazing stuff and went perfectly with the tart. Per-fect-l-y. It’s been sitting in my pantry since Memorial Day, and I can’t believe all the time I wasted not using it.

Bosc pears channeling Rosalind Russell

recipe after the jump

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I’m a big fan of Apartment Therapy’s food blog, The Kitchn; they post frequently about a wide range of subjects and I’ve found quite a few recipes there that have gone into regular rotation in our home. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.

The post linked to Gourmet’s Cumin-Apple Crisps and a bright idea was born as I realized: “Hey, I love apples and I’m totally into cumin!” Unfortunately, I love apples so much, I didn’t have any in the house. I decided to use a bosc pear instead, which might’ve led to my latest kitchen disaster (though I suspect the unholy union of cumin and sugar contributed).

Out came the mandoline — my favorite kitchen toy — and I sliced one of the pears, snatching a few thin slivers for myself along the way. I sifted the cumin and sugar together, sampling a tiny bit before sprinkling it over the crisps; it was horrible, but I hoped some wondrous alchemy would take place in the oven and continued with the recipe.

Ninety minutes later I realized just how misplaced my optimism was, as my tongue turned inside-out to get away from the taste of the chips.

Now, it’s (probably) entirely my fault for substituting pears for apples, but the sugar and cumin just did not marry well on that platform. Maybe next time I’ll try The Kitchn’s suggestion and use cinnamon instead of cumin.

It’s a shame these were such a huge disappointment. They were so pretty:

Elegance
One perfect roasted pear. One perfect dessert.

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recipe after the jump

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