Home Recipes Winter Pear Salad: A Gifted Dish

Winter Pear Salad: A Gifted Dish

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Winter Pear Salad: A Gifted Dish

winter pear salad

The good, among the bad and the ugly of the refrigerator.

After the holidays, my refrigerator can resemble a food morgue with rows of Tupperware caskets sealing in freshness or fuzzy blue mold as the case may be. After deciding to exhume the bad dishes of Christmas past and make way for a culinary New Year, I was delighted to rediscover some epicurean gifts tucked among the sarcophagi of scary leftovers: Oregon Comice pears from Leslie and Olivia; fresh Georgia pecans from my Mom and Dad; a slab of Shropshire Blue from Tamara; a voluptuous carafe of aged balsamic from Denise; and a meaty ham bone from this resident ham bone. As culinary kismet would have it, I had everything I needed to make one of my favorite winter salads–a gifted dish indeed.

winter pear salad

Recipe: Winter Pear Salad

Ingredients:

  • 3 peeled Comice pears (or Bosc or D’Anjou pears)
  • 1/2 cup of chopped pecans
  • 1/2 cup of crumbled Shropshire Blue cheese (or Stilton or blue cheese)
  • 1 cup of chopped ham (or omit for vegetarian status)
  • 1 T. of aged balsamic vinegar
  • 1 T. of olive oil
  • Ground pepper to taste

Preparation:

  1. Chop cored peeled pears into bite-sized pieces.
  2. Add pears to salad bowl
  3. Add chopped pecans
  4. Add crumbled cheese
  5. Add chopped ham
  6. Drizzle balsamic and olive oil over mixture
  7. Toss, let it sit for a couple minutes and toss again to incorporate released pear juice
  8. Pepper to taste
  9. Serves 4 as side salads, or 2 as dinner salads

I love this salad and make variations of it all winter. Ripe pears make it sing, blue cheese adds vibrato, nuts provide percussion and ham packs a salty punch. Experiment with your favorite fruits, cheeses and nuts. Sometimes I mix in wild salad greens or Boston bibb lettuce, that is when the contents of my crisper don’t resemble sea kelp.

PS–My blog pal Stacey also offers up a delicious variation of a pear salad on her site.

22 COMMENTS

  1. What a tasty & fabulous winter salad this surely is, dear Tom!!
    I love the 1st picture a lot!! MMMMM,…

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    Come over & check it ou! You will love it! Could you update my RSS & change it ! Could you also change my blog link & add it again to your blogg list? thanks!! I also added your blog again to my blog list!!

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  2. Dang, I should of kept that cheese! Oh well, tonight it’s aged Irish Cheddar and Petit Basque cheese on the table. What would you make with those Tom? Not that I’m going to share ha ha. I should never look at your blog before dinner!!!

  3. I love to look at all your lovely photos!
    That salad looks incredible (except, of course, for the poisonous pecans). I’ll have to see what I have in my fridge when I get home…

  4. The left overs it seems are put to good use which reminds me of a french phrase “restes frais” as an alternate to Chris’s suggestion. The term is somewhat of a double entendre meaning fresh remains. It has the required culinary lilt but is used in France to describe the newly dead such as in a cadaver. I figured with your sense of humor, you and your cultural following might get a kick out of the name.

  5. brion, you funny man. I’m surprised that no one in LA or NY hasn’t jumped on that name for a hip new restaurant called…Bistro Restes Frais.

    “Jordan, have you tried the foie gras at Bistro Restes Frais? Oh Ellery, I love it as much as the duck confit with pork cracklins.”

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