I recently wrote about how I don’t celebrate the harvest festivals as they are written in the Wheel of the Year because they don’t…particularly feel right to me? But as the harvest comes in – as it arrives in all of the endless abundances which I feel like it does, on schedule, every year – I have to celebrate it somehow.
As a kitchen witch, my craft is always changing with the seasons. Even each repeating season has its own themes and surprise guest stars. I can (and will) write at least a post a year about apple and butternut squash so it’s exciting to get handed a bag full of pears picked from my good friend’s trees.
I have a personal attachment to pears but little actual experience. My maiden name means something like “of the pear tree” and there was this one night experience with a beautiful Poire Williams (an eau de vie or pear brandy) at a fancy restaurant in Montreal. A number of years ago we tried to make a Pyser (pear mead cyser) which did not go particularly well. Still, I am convinced. Someone on my familiar line had enough of a connection to pears to get named for them…it’s in here somewhere.
My lovely covenmate Dora suggested that I soak them in brandy but it got my partner and me wondering – what, in fact, was a brandied pear? I adapted this Martha Stewart recipe to account for the size of our bounty and started peeling.
I find it important when making harvest magic to be in a good state of mind. This should be obvious but I think that it’s something that people miss in kitchen magic – your state of mind will get mixed in with your food every bit as much as any other intentions that you might have. Thankfully, for me, the very idea of the harvest itself makes me gleefully happy. As I’m peeling my pears, I’m sitting there with a huge grin on my face thinking about the best $3 bag of peaches that I have ever bought at a flower stand on the side of the road.
Do other people buy peaches from the flower stand on the side of the road? That is so much a part of living out here in the hills During the height of the growing season it is possible to avoid the grocery store entirely if you know which farm stand sells sweet corn, which sells summer squash, and so forth. You can often find eggs and milk in coolers, too! Most of the time, you pay by putting your money into a lockbox or sometimes just a simple cup.
In any case, my favorite florist had an overabundance of peaches in her trees so she put them in paper bags for $3 a pop. I’m telling you – these bags were filled to the brim with the tiniest white peaches!
That’s the thing about abundance – if you treat it properly it grows and passes on to everybody around you. When you have enough, share. Though she could have charged a hefty penny for her beautiful white peaches (a quick peruse of Instacat says that to buy a standard peach locally, I’d be paying upwards of $2.45/peach and that’s not even for organic!), she instead chose to treat her regular customers.
That is the magic of harvest – on a good year with enough rain, there is more than enough to go around. My neighborhood florist had enough peaches to see at her flower stand and my friend had enough pears to give us a bag to take home with them. When you have enough, share. At what better is there to share than perfectly ripe late summer fruit?
In any case, the peaches ended up in two large crisps that I shared with my loved ones and in a very experimental cocktail recipe that may make it onto these pages if I can perfect it well enough. Just remembering each luscious bite puts me in a deep state of gratitude – the perfect mood for my brandied pears.
As I discovered quickly there are a number of ways to make Brandied Pears. There are many recipes for making a cooked pear desert calling themselves brandied pears but that didn’t quite seem right to me. Though that’s fine (I love me some pear crisp), that wasn’t what I was going for. But soaking the pears in brandy? That I can get behind.
If you’ve been following along for a while you may have figured out that I love alcohol infusions. My partner and I both make our own bitters blends and if somebody has told me that a certain botanical may taste good in booze, I’ve probably tried it. I could wax on about cardamom black tea infused rye whiskey, but I digress…
The recipe is surprisingly simple. After parboiling with some spices, the pears go into a jar where they get topped with brandy. I didn’t even use the good brandy – that can come later if we decide that we like and need to replicate the recipe. From here, the pears were ready to head off to a dark place to sit for a month or two to let the flavors meld.
I chose to keep the pears whole because I like the ascetics of it. But also because it gives me the opportunity to serve them both whole or cut in the future.
Future Minx here: It’s October now and just starting to get chilly for the first time this season at night. I decided to break out the brandied pears for the first time at our weekly dinner party with friends. I have heard that brandied pears can be served both warm and cold but we choose cold for our first introduction. We cut up the pear into bite-sized bits and served it with some pre-cooked crisp topping (oats, flour, nuts, butter, and brown sugar), and some ginger ice cream.
The results were amazing. The brandied pears are startlingly boozy (should I have been that surprised? Brandy IS a strong spirit) but make a nice foil to the sweeter toppings that we paired it with. Ginger was a nice touch – I think that you could include ginger in with the pears during the infusion to enhance this further and I may try this next time around.
All in all, I am very pleased with my discovery. I have another jar of pears set aside to share with my friends who gifted me with their yard bounty. This time I am going to cook them first. I like working that way, from cooked to uncooked. It makes sense with my brain to work forward – what have I created so far? Now, what do I need to do to better this?
I’ll never stop asking that question.