John brought home a canvas bag full of rock-hard pears he’d noticed hanging from a tree in a public area near our home. With permission, he picked them. I was skeptical — they were not only hard, but many of them were covered with brown pits. I found out that some pears never get soft and are only used for cooking. Others ripen slowly at room temperature off the tree.
I also found out that even pears grown for eating out of hand are allowed to ripen off the tree. This eliminates the grainy texture that many people don’t like in pears, and also prevents the fruit from being bruised by falling once it gets ripe and soft. I didn’t know which kind I had, so while they were still hard, I cooked them according to a recipe I found at Cottage Smallholder, a delightful blog.
The recipe calls only for wine vinegar, sugar and hard pears, which are peeled but not stemmed or cored. Once peeled, the pears were smooth and perfect. I used sherry vinegar since I have an abundance of it. The pears and the syrup both tasted wonderful — delicate, exotic and very sweet. The rest of the pears are getting a little softer, so I may choose the biggest and prettiest to eat as it.
