Every Time I Make Poached Pears With Wine Sauce, People Rave About It.

Ingredients:

3 to 4 bosc pears

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup water

1/3 cup red wine

NOTE: If you don’t want to use red wine, you can use 1 cup of water and 3 tablespoons vanilla (versus the 2/3 cup water and 1/3 cup red wine.)

You will need 3 to 4 bosc pears like this one - preferably a little on the ripe side.

With a potato peeler, peel off the skin. Leave the stem attached.

With a strawberry huller (or a small spoon) scoop out the core and the seeds from the bottom of the pear.

In a small pot, add 1 cup sugar, 2/3 cup water, and 1/3 cup red wine. Put over medium high heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Lower the heat to just below medium, and add pears.

Cover and cook for 15 to 20 minutes turning the pears as needed.

When pears are soft enough to easily pierce with a fork, remove them to a plate. I use a fork or tongs.

Turn up the heat to medium high again and stir until red wine mixture is a thin syrup.

With a laddle, pour syrup onto a plate and place pear on top - like in this photo.

You better eat your pear fast, because they will be going...

Going...

Gone.

Potato Pancakes and Fried Eggs (A Variation of the Recipe In the Cookbook Falling Cloudberries)

This is McCann with my copy of the Falling Cloudberries cookbook. I haven't cooked from it in a very long time. While looking through it, I decided to share a recipe from it at least once a month. This is my variation of her Potato Pancakes.

1 large russet potato

1 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

2 tablespoons heavy cream

2 tablespoons chicken broth

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon dried parsley

pinch black pepper

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Take one large potato, like this one.

Peel it, like this.

Chop it into small cubes.

Put it in a pot and cover with water.

Add 1/2 teaspoon salt. and start to boil over medium heat.

While that is cooking, take one large egg, like the one in my hand here.

Crack it in half and separate the yolk and the whites. I pass the yolk between each half of the egg shell over a bowl, or they have specialized tools for this job.

Here they are separated.

Beat the yolks.

Put the whites in a bigger bowl.

You can either beat it by hand like this, or...

or you you can beat it with an electric mixer like this.

Either way, beat it until the whites form stiff peaks like this.

Once the potatoes are soft enough to easily pierce with a fork, drain them.

Now put them through a ricer or mash them very well. (By the way, potato ricers are wonderful and you can buy them for as cheap as $13. Just $32 for a uber cool one at Williams-Sonoma.

Here is what the potatoes will look like after going through the ricer.

Add 2 tablespoons heavy cream.

And 2 tablespoons chicken broth.

Mix with a fork.

Add two tablespoons flour.

And 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley and a pinch of black pepper.

Now mix in the egg yolk.

It will look like this.

Now mix in the whipped egg whites.

You now have potato pancake batter.

Add 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil to a frying pan.

Once the butter is melted and you have spread the butter and oil around in the pan, pour you batter.

You can either do small cakes like this.

This is what they look like done (with a fried egg).

And this is what it looks like fried up as one big pancake. You can just drop the egg right on top. This is also good with salmon, bacon or sausage. It tastes different than a regular pancake.

Perfect Roast

INGREDIENTS:

1 roast (about 4 lbs.)

5-10 cloves of garlic

1 large onion

1-12 oz. bottle of beer

salt

Pepper

First make 5-10 slits in the roast.

Then insert a clove of garlic in each slit.

Next, rub salt on the outside.

And pepper.

Then put your roast in a dutch oven and sear it in your oven for 20 minutes at 500 degrees.

Once that is done, pull dutch oven out and add one large onion coarsely chopped, 12 oz of beer and 1 cup of beef broth. Put back in the oven and lower the heat to 375 and cook it 20 minutes for every pound (or use a meat thermometer and take it out when the internal temp is 150 for rare, 160 for medium and 170 for well done.)

I tried to get Brandon to take a sip of the beer, but he refused. Good boy Brandon. Last thing we need is dad to get arrested for giving alcohol to a minor. (If you don't want to use beer, 12 oz. of broth will do just as good.)

While the roast was cooking, I made mashed potatoes and...

Whole cooked carrots to eat on the side.

Once the roast was done, I took the roast out and carved it up.

I made gravy with the drippings.

Here is the finished product.

We had our neighbors, Trevor and Amanda over to eat with us. They brought the beautiful artichokes you see in this picture and..."

This scrumptious Summer Berry Gratin with vanilla ice cream (recipe to be posted later).