Bitter greens, like frisee and radichetta, and soft blue cheese marry well with sweet, caramelized pears in this savory salad.


If you want an organic orchard in New Hampshire, you have to get used to some pretty funky looking fruit. The worst pest I have to contend with is the plum curculio, a small weevil that does big damage. There's scarcely a fruit I grow that's impervious to curculio, and the few organic controls available for the pests are labor intensive and not terribly effective. Some fruits, though, do a better job than others of standing up to the little buggers.

For instance, they seem to hate fuzzy skin, so peaches do pretty well for me, as do furry varieties of quince. Seeded fruits, such as pears and apples, while they don't like curculio eggs, are more stubborn hangers-on than the stone-fruits. Curculio just make them a little gnarly-looking, and sometimes cause small, hard spots in the flesh. Such damage can be annoying when biting into a fresh apple or pear, but is easy to work around when cooking.

It'll be a few weeks before the best varieties of apples, like my favorite, Northern Spies, are ready to pick. But pears, unlike apples, are best picked before they are completely ripe. Indeed, if you leave a pear to ripen on the tree, it will turn to a mealy mess within a day or two of picking. Pears should be harvested when they've begun to sweeten but are still a little hard and green, and then kept cold until you're ready to let them ripen at room temperature. For this reason, pears can be stored a long time without losing quality and are one of the best fruits to buy fresh at the supermarket

In my orchard, I begin harvest-

ing Bartlett pears in mid-August, move on to tiny Seckel pears by the end of the month and finish the season in September with my favorites - crunchy, russet-skinned Bosc pears. I store all of them in an old refrigerator in the barn, where they'll keep just fine while I deal with the tetchier fruits and vegetables in my harvest, like tomatoes and peppers and herbs, the ones that have to be picked ripe and processed immediately.

That said, it's hard to resist the buttery, juicy Bartletts, the sharp-sweet Seckels and the elegant Boscs for too long - I always seem to have a few out on the counter feeding the fruit flies as I wait for them to become perfectly ripe.

In our house, as often as not, pears wind up in savory dishes as well as sweet ones. They're more delicately flavored than apples, I think, so they're more easily paired with herbs and greens.

Though pears are delicious raw, cooking them develops their sugars into caramels, softens them a little and keeps them from going brown. Too, they readily absorb the colors and flavors of what they're cooked with; just be sure you don't add anything too assertive, like garlic, or you'll wipe out their delicate taste.

This recipe is particularly delicious with some of the bitter greens that are planted in July and come into their own now. Try frisee and the Italian green called radichetta if you can find them at the farmers market - they balance the sweetness of the caramelized pears perfectly. And if you don't have fresh rosemary on hand, use dried instead - its flavor, fresh or dried, is an essential part of this dish.

Honey and Rosemary Caramelized Pears with Greens and Blue Cheese

1 tablespoon butter or oil (I like grapeseed, but olive oil works well, too)

¼ cup honey

1 small sprig of rosemary plus ¼ teaspoon minced fresh rosemary leaves (or use ½ teaspoon dried, divided between the pan and the salad dressing)

3 Bosc pears, peeled, cored and cut into ¼-inch slices

1 large shallot, peeled and minced, about 2 tablespoons (you may substitute minced onion)