Not A Cookbook: More From Zac Brown

In January we featured Zac Brown's cookbook Southern Ground. Check out this today's article in the New York Times about the band's chef, Rusty Hamlin and their "eat and greets."

Tart And Sweet

We love confiture.

The last couple of years has seen a boom for canning cookbooks. It seems everyone with some Ball jars and deep pot is out there canning. Well good for them. What is really great about these newer canning book is their detail to size. Many older canning books go for that big batch, supporting the family for the entire year approach. Newer canning books tell you how to grab up a few pints of berries and turn it into jam without commandeering the entire neighborhood or kitchen for that matter.

So here's the deal with many of these cookbooks: they tend to be overwrought with info, making you believe you need to be a rocket scientist to make a simple jam... Houston we have blueberries! Then there is the other extreme, add fruit, sugar, cook, and can. Tart and Sweet has a nice medium. There are photos of things you need to know, like how much head space does one really need in one's pickles, or jam for that matter.

Kelly Geary runs Sweet Deliverance NYC in New York City or Brooklyn, you know somewhere "up there." Jessie Knadler used to be a big old New Yorker until love intervened and now she live in Virginia and can be found at Rurally Screwed. Their recipes are easy, the pictures are lovely, and they give you options for what exactly to do with all this stuff once you get it canned. I love using my jams and conserves as cocktail ingredients and so do they.

If I do have a big old criticism it is using Pomona's Universal Pectin. I have used it before, but being one of those people who is "rurally screwed", it is a tough product to find in West Virginia. But then, I try to stay away from pectin all together. But seriously, what do I do.

That being said, this is a good book for someone who is starting out and needs to know the basics. This book includes one of my favorite pickles, pickled fiddleheads. Now if you think Pomona's Universal Pectin is tough to find, try finding fiddleheads at your local grocery.

I first tried these great pickles in Vermont. I swore my friend Barbara said her mother-in-law made them, but both Barbara and her husband, Steve, swear I made that up. Several years later I found a forager and pickle maker in the backwoods of Vermont. The guy had no e-mail, nothing but a PO Box. I would request two jars of pickled fiddleheads and send cash. Several months later I would eventually receive a box packed with two pints of pickled fiddleheads. I would admire them for several weeks before breaking into them. I lost track of my forager, but if you find the fiddlehead guy, tell him to call. In the meantime if you've got the fiddleheads....

Pickled Fiddleheads

3 1/2 cups white wine vinegar
2 1/2 cups water
2 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 3/4 lbs. fiddleheads (see note)
Per jar:
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp. brown mustard seed
2 tsp. coriander seed
1/2 tsp. black peppercorns
1/2 tsp. dill seed
1/4 tsp. celery seed

Note: Fiddleheads can taste bitter if not cleaned properly. To prepare, trim the “tail” of the shoot just to where it starts to coil. Soak the heads in cold water and swirl them around, picking and rubbing away any brown flaky bits. Repeat as necessary until all the brown bits have been removed.

1. Bring the vinegar, water and salt to a boil in a medium nonreactive pot. Stir to dissolve the salt.

2. Pack the fiddleheads, bay leaf, garlic and spices into hot jars. Pour boiling brine over the fiddleheads, making sure they are covered and leaving 1/2 inch head space.

3. Check for air bubbles, wipe the rims, and seal. Process for 10 minutes , adjusting for elevation.

Or you could just grab a pint or two of berries.

Down The Kitchen Sink

Last year Lucindaville (and Cookbook Of The Day) offered up a Famous Food Friday about Beverley Nichols and we are doing it again.

When last we were cooking with Beverely Nichols, we were pondering his "found" cookbook, In an Eighteenth Century Kitchen. This was the cookbook Nichols wrote about in A Thatched Roof. After his success with Down The Garden Path, the first and probably best known, or should I say, remembered of Nichols' books, he chose to undertake a similar culinary adventure which would become Down the Kitchen Sink. Nichols knew as little about cooking and he once did about gardening and I am sure he thought if could master gardening, why not cooking.




This is, however, Beverely Nichols, so an actual cookbook is not exactly what is presented. Even Nichols admits to this:

"This is supposed to be a cookery v book, but I suspect that it will turn out to be something rather different. True, it contains a number of Gaskin's own recipes, which, after his death, I found interlarded among the pages of the cookery books that he had collected over the years. these were sometimes scribbled over with mysterious comments on the guest who were to partake of them, such as 'No crab for Lady F'. I cannot remember any Lady F in my life, nor why she should have been denied this delicacy."

The "Gaskin" mentioned is Reginald Arthur Gaskin who was Nichols manservant for 40 years. When the writer, P.G. Woodhouse visited Nichols and was served by Gaskin, he remarked that Gaskin was, "the perfect Jeeves." While it is said that Woodhouse based his character on a butler he employed for research, Eugene Robinson, it comes as no surprise that Jeeves' Christian name is revealed in 1971 to be "Reginald" but then... Bertie was based on an earlier character named Reggie Pepper... but I digress....

Beverely Nichols, Reginald Gaskin and Nichols gardener, Oldfield.

You get the idea of Gaskin's demeanor. After forty years, when Gaskin died, Nichols found himself in his kitchen alone searching for something to eat. Nichols takes it upon himself to write a cookery book, but it becomes more of dining book filled with interesting people including but not limited to: Noel Coward, Oliver Messel, and William Randolph Hearst. His stories are wonderfully gossipy filled with dish and food.

Clearly, some of the recipes are unique to Nichols. This unnamed recipe is on Nichols "heard" about. It is by far the strangest recipe, and one you should replicate at your own risk.

Silver Chicken

I had to invent this title for this recipe does no appear in any cookery book which I have yet encountered.

You take the largest capon you can buy. It must be a whooper.

You then rinse 6 or 8 silver spoons or forks in hot water. Only silver will do; silver plate would be worse than useless.

Now, taking a firm grip of the chicken, push the silver up its behind. As if this were not enough humiliation, follow it with two heaped tablespoonful of ground ginger. All this sounds extremely sadistic but it is no more so than keeping the poor thing cramped in a cage for the whole of its unnatural life.

Having maltreated the chicken in this manner, bring a large saucepan of slightly salted water to a boil, put in the chicken, add 6 carrots and 6 medium sized onions, cram on the lid, and boil at the gallop for precisely 5 minutes.

Turn off the gas, lift up the saucepan, transport to the larder, and leave to cool overnight.

On the following morning you must be prepared for a shock. When you lift the chicken out and drain off the water, and remove the spoons and forks, you will find that they have all gone black. Do not be alarmed. A good soaking in any of the modern silver-cleaning preparations will restore them, though this may take rather longer than usual.

A chicken prepared in this manner tastes quite different from any chicken you have ever had before, unless you are at least sixty years old, and can recall the days of your youth, when a chicken really was a chicken, and not a synthetic Robot bird, reared by Robots for the mechanical digestion of other Robots. Apart from the taste, it can be carved in delicate slices, instead of falling to pieces in the manner of the average boiled chicken of today.

I cannot think of a better dinner companion than Beverely Nichols. When you try this recipe, do send us a photo -- or the chicken and the silverware!

The Transcendental Boiled Dinner

The Transcendental Boiled Dinner is one of those cookbooks that is not. Died in the wool Mainer, John Pullen delivers his 92 homage to one of the quintessential Maine culinary experiences -- the boiled dinner.

Pullen begins his history with the apropos statement from none other than Mark Twain:

"Mark Twain once remarked that there is nothing so good as Southern corn bread and nothing so bad as the Northern imitation of it."

He had me at "corn bread."

Pullen admits to no culinary ability except for the New England Boiled Dinner. But it is not culinary ability that makes a boiled dinner:

"Success in preparing the New England Boiled dinner begins with the character of the cook."

To understand Pullen's hypothesis he illustrates it with two well-known characters from eighteenth century America. Cooking character on a scale of 1 -10 would give you:

Benjamin Franklin ............................................................Johnathan Edwards

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Pullen says of Franklin, "I would not trust Franklin to boil this Dinner as far as I could throw him."

Pullen says of Edwards, "he is superb metaphysically in his qualifications for the Boiled Dinner assignment."

He had me at "Jonathan Edwards."

Anyone that feels the need to employ the Doctrine of Original Sin into their culinary pursuits is fine with me.
For his Transcendental Boiled Dinner, Pullen notes that there is beef and the following four vegetables: Potatoes, Cabbage, Carrots and Turnips. Now some people will say that in addition to these vegetables, one should add the onion. Pullen disagrees -- vociferously.

"I have emphasized the necessity of a theological point of view that will exclude from the Dinner all ingredients except those I have appointed as being fit and worthy. To all these excluded things the onion stands a does Satan to his host of minor fiends, demons and evil spirits!"

As you now may realize, the recipe for Transcendental Boiled Dinner is more of "path" than an actual recipe, filled with science, theology and literature. Here however is the recipe. There is a standard table and the modified table as Mr. Pullen was regrettably tardy in beginning the process:


Standard Table........................................................... Modified Table

Beef starts simmer.....2:00 P.M.....................................2:05 P.M.
Turnip insertion.........5:16 P.M.....................................5:21 P.M.
Potato insertion..........5:31 P.M.....................................5:36 P.M.
Cabbage insertion.......5:41 P.M.....................................5:46 P.M.
Carrot insertion..........5:46 P.M......................................5:51 P.M.
Dinner done...............6:00 P.M......................................6:05 P.M.


And as Jonathan Edwards will tell you, one simply cannot lie about the details, lest he be cast into Hell. Cookbook or not, The Transcendental Boiled Dinner is a culinary masterpiece.

Cold Cuisine

In the late 1970' and 1980's, Helen Hecht wrote a series of lovely cookbooks, including Cold Cuisine. The book has a lot of salads and soups and refreshing deserts. As with most old cookbooks, it is a product of its era. Cold Cuisine is very much a a regular book, a simple octavo unadorned by photos and thus very different from the vast majority of the cookbooks published today. Perhaps the grand size and all those colored pictures are simply a mask to conceal the actual recipes. I know it seems much easier to cook from a photo than from the blank canvas of a printed recipe, but in time those photos will be as dated as avocado appliance. In the end, it is the recipes that make the book.

Helen Hecht writes of cold cuisine:

"The appearance of a dish is especially important in the summer. While a steaming hot cassoulet may require no further embellishment than its own enticing aroma and an appetite stimulated by winter chill, summer food must rouse appetites languishing or dormant in stifling weather. You can transform an ordinary-looking dish into something attractive and appealing with a few simple touches and an eye for color, arrangement , and detail."

It might come as no surprise that Helen Hecht was married to the poet Anthony Hecht, as her brief introduction is a poetic tribute to cuisine. When I read this recipe, it seemed to be a simple salad. That it is, but taking into consideration Hecht's description of transforming a cold weather dishes, a simple salad might just be the starting point. Before you toss a bag of lettuce into a bowl, think of how it might be transformed with tiny black olives, rich green avocado, and bursting red tomatoes.

Al Fresco Salad

8 thin slices bacon
2 ripe avocados
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 medium-size, ripe tomatoes
1 cup black pitted olives, halved
1 small Bermuda onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 ounces blue cheese, crumbled (1/2 cup)
1/2 pound fresh spinach, washed and stemmed and dried
salt
freshly ground pepper
1 recipe of Basic Vinaigrette (below)

Sauté bacon till crisp, drain on paper towels. Peel avocados, slice into bowl and toss with lemon juice. Core the tomatoes and chop into bite-size pieces. Combine bacon, avocados, tomatoes, olives, onion, blue cheese, and spinach in a bowl. Season to taste.


Basic Vinaigrette

1 garlic clove peeled and cut in half
3/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons wine vinegar
Combine and let stand for several hours. Remove garlic before using.

Enjoy the last of the garden and Fall is waiting in the wings.

The Woman's Guide to Boating and Cooking

So you are thinking to yourself, "I really need a good book on sailing and cooking." Well look no farther than The Woman's Guide to Boating and Cooking by Lael Morgan. Not one to spend a great deal of time on the lesson taking approach to sailing, Morgan married a man who liked to sail and travel so they bought a boat and with no experience, Morgan became the first mate, quite literally. And also the cook.

The first half of the book is about sailing. Written in the late 1960's, it might just seem that Mrs. Morgan was at sea during the Women's Movement judging from this observation:

"Women who love to sail are as rare as cats who swim for pleasure. My husband can sail for hours and enjoy playing with the wind and current. I have to be going somewhere. I can't get ecstatic over the set of the jib without ulterior motives, and I have found few women who can."

It is the very "datedness" of this little book that is so charming. Take for example the straight forward approach to buying your boat:

"At the last national boat show the typical answer to "how much?" was $548 for the boat and $501 to move it."

Well, today, given our inflammatory stock market, you couldn't buy groceries for the boat for $548. And speaking of groceries, the recipes in this book are quite consistent with the prevailing food trends of the time -- there is an abundance of canned soups and canned meats, even canned seafood, which, given the fact that one is supposed to be on a boat, seems a little silly. Just catch some fish. Seriously.

Here is a recipe that is the "boating" equivalent to welsh rabbit. It seems to me the kind of dish that just might have the cook walk the plank.

Blushing Bunny

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 cup hot water
1/2 pound grated cheese
1 can tomato soup, undiluted

Melt butter, Add flour and mustard. Add water, blend, and let thicken. Add cheese and let melt, stir in soup. When hot and well mixed, serve on crackers.

How about this recipe to get you in the pink...

Pink Stew

1 cup lobster meat (cooked or canned)
3 tablespoons butter
4 cups milk, scalded
1 teaspoon salt
onion slice
paprika

Saute lobster in butter 4 minutes. Add milk. Season. Serve hot, but do not boil. Float onion ring in each serving and sprinkle with paprika. (Crabmeat may be substituted for lobster.)

You will forgive me if I don't try these two winners on or off dry land. We seem to be in a "yachting" mood these days. Check out our favorite, Ethelind Fearon's travelogue, Without My Yacht, at Lucindaville.

Recipes Of All Nations

Many cooks of the thirties, including Elizabeth David, were enamored of Countess Morphy's Recipes Of All Nations. There is very little known about Countess Morphy, though many believe she is a "countess" in that same way Prince is a "prince", that is in name only. Still the Countess knew how to collect recipes. This rather massive tome contains over 800 recipes from 29 countries.

This copy bears an introduction by the well-known 1950's television cook, Philip Harben. Harben states that while he has not cooked all 800 recipes, he has cooked over a dozen and boldly states, "I have never found Countess Morphy once to be in error."

There is a large section on Creole cookery and more than one person believes that before she was the "Countess", she was Marcelle Azra Hincks or maybe Forbes from New Orleans. Her section on Creole recipes features a calas recipe. This is a great old New Orleans recipe that is making a bit of a comeback in cooking circles.

Calas (Breakfast rice fritters)

These delicious breakfast fritters or cakes were sold by the old Creole negro women, and their familiar and harmonious street cry of “Bel calas, bel calas, tout chauds!” was heard in all the streets of the French quarter at breakfast time. They went their daily round carrying on their heads a covered wooden bowl containing the hot Calas – picturesque figures they must have been, with their brightly coloured bandana tignons or head-dress, their blue check dresses and their spotless white aprons. The negro cooks would dash out to secure the freshly made hot Calas, which were eaten with the morning cup of coffee. The following is the traditional recipe for Calas:

Ingredients: ½ a cup of rice, 3 cups of water, 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons of flour, ½ a cup of sugar, about 1 oz or a little under of yeast, lard or oil.

Method: Put the water in a saucepan, bring to the boil and add the rice. Boil till the rice is very soft and mushy. Remove from the saucepan and, when quite cold, mix with the yeast dissolved in warm water. Set the rice to rise overnight. In the morning, beat the eggs thoroughly, add them to the rice, with the sugar and flour. Beat all well and make into a thick batter. Set aside to rise for another 15 minutes. Have ready a deep frying pan with hot oil or lard, drop into it 1 tablespoon of the mixture at a time, and cook till a light golden colour. When done, remove them from the fat, drain well by placing them on a sieve or in a colander, sprinkle with sugar and serve very hot.

My copy of this book was used exclusively for the Austro-Hungarian recipes. (There are notes and checks.) This seemed to be a favorite. The "paprika" here refers to the actual pepper so the Countess should have translated it as a Pepper Salad.

Paprika Salat (Paprika Salad)

The paprikas are either boiled or baked till tender and served with salad dressing made of 2 tablespoons of oil to 1 of vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little sugar.

AS you can see, there are just more countries than we have time for here.

Cold Dishes For Hot Weather

It seems that EVERYONE is talking about the weather. It seems funny that during this horrible "hot" spell, no one is raising the issue of global warming. It is 104 in Washington, D. C.! So it seems time to pull out this little gem, Cold Dishes For Hot Weather. As with the weather, many of these dishes are libel to end up "hot" or at the very least lukewarm before they can be served.

this book was written in 1896 and it features many a simple and straightforward offering.

Egg-Plant Salad

boil the egg-plant until cooked; peel and cut into small pieces; add the juice of a lemon , 1 tablespoon of oil. Mix well and serve.

Simple and to the point.

This book loves "patties" for cold dishes and offers this time saving advice:

The cost and trouble of making patty-cases is such that it is far preferable to buy them at the caterers'; especially is it desirable as when the cook will run the risk of spoiling the paste. Pie pastry is not so easily spoiled as patty of puff paste, and as this is not obtainable, the cook will have to tempt fate and try her own skill at making it herself.

And then... the reader receives absolutely no information on making one's own puff pastry or pie pastry for that matter. It is obvious that the cook is obliged to buy those puff pastry cases and be done with it. After you buy yourself some pie crust you are instructed to make pies like this one...

Cheshire Pork Pie

Skin a loin of pork; cut into small steaks; season with salt, nutmeg, and pepper. Make a pie-crust, and fill with a layer of pork, then one of apples, pared and cored, and sugar enough to sweeten it, then another layer of pork; pour over half a pint of white wine, and cover all with a little butter before covering the pie.

OK, that is all the instruction provided. One assumes the pie must now be cooked. Since it has chunks of pork and raw apples, one would think it might just need to be cooked for quite some time. Since it is 1896 and most stoves are still wood-fired, I'm going out a limb here and saying that this "cold" dish is going to seriously heat up my house. My "hot weather" is going to be blazing hot in my house! But the time this pie cools down it may well be tomorrow! I believe that Cheshire Pork Pie should therefore be a 'Hot Dish for Cold Weather."

I'm headed back to the air-conditioning with a Dove Bar.

Entertaining All'Italiana

It is no big secret that I collect cookbooks. Unfortunately for me, I do not have unlimited funds to procure said cookbooks, so I always have a list of items that I am looking for with the caveat that they must fall on $20 range. Many of them I can find, but alas, I cannot afford them, so there is an eternal quest for certain grail. One such grail was Anna del Conte’s Entertaining All'Italiana. There have always been a few copies of this elusive book on the market, but they tended to be priced between $100 and $300. That is a lot of tomato sauce and garlic!

First, let me say that Anna del Conte is not well known in America. In England, however, she is cross between Julia Child and Lidia Bastianich. Sure, now there is big food movement in England, but thirty years ago, English food was a bit of a joke. Imagine what it was like when Elizabeth David and Anna del Conte put forward fresh spicy, Italian creations. Del Conte married an Englishman and that is what lead her from her Italian kitchen to England. Del Conte wrote the first complete compendium of Italian food for and English speaking population, Gastronomy of Italy.

Finally, it didn’t hurt that Nigella Lawson stated emphatically that Entertaining All'Italiana was probably her favorite cookery book. (Click here to read Nigella's touching tribute to del Conte.)Published in the early 1990’s, Entertaining All'Italiana is a throwback to older cookbooks, featuring a handful of line drawings for chapter headings, but no pictures of the food.

So finally, I saw a copy of Entertaining All'Italiana. I knew it immediately as I had memorized its blue jacket with the painting of the plums and walnuts. I knew it would be out of my price range, but surprisingly it was under my $20 limit and I practically hyperventilated at the pristine book and fine jacket.

When I got it home, I admired it for several days before I even cracked the spine. The very first recipe was for Linguine coi piselli alla panna, a flat spaghetti with peas and cream. That very morning I picked peas in the garden and had a small bowl sitting on the counter. It was kismet.

Linguine coi piselli alla panna

450 r/1 lb linguine
salt
freshly grated Parmesan for serving

For the sauce

45g/1 1/2 oz unsalted butter
4 shallots, very finely chopped
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
225g/1/2 lb fresh garden peas, podded, or frozen peas, thawed
1 tbsp flour
6tbsp dry white vermouth
120 ml/1/4 pint single cream
freshly ground pepper

If you are using fresh peas, plunge them in a saucepan of boiling water and cook them for 5 minutes, Frozen peas do not nee this blanching.

Choose a large sauté pan or frying pan into which you can later transfer the drained pasta. Put the butter and shallots in the pan and sprinkle with the sugar and salt. Saute the shallots until soft and then add the peas. Coat them in the butter for 1 minute, sprinkle with the flour and cool for a further minute, stirring the whole time, Stir in the vermouth, boil for 1 minute and then add the stock. Cover the pan and regulate the heat so that the liquid will simmer gently for the peas to cook. They must be tender, not just al dente. Stir in the cream, cook for a couple of minutes. Add pepper , taste and check seasoning.

Meanwhile, put a large saucepan of water on the heat and bring to the boil. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of cooking salt and when the water has come back to a roaring boil, slide in the linguine, a ll at once, pushing them in gently with your hand. Stir with a long fork, putting the lid back on the pan until the water is boiling again, then remove the lid and cook at a steady boil until the linguine is done. Drain, but do not overdrain, and transfer immediately to the pan with the sauce. Stir-fry, using two forks, and stirrings with a high movement so that all the pasta strands are well coated with the sauce.

Now, if your frying pan is a good-looking one, bring the pan directly to the table. The less pasta is transfer from the container to another , the better; it keeps hotter. But if you do not like to bring sauce pans to the table, tun the pasta into a heated bowl and serve, handing round the Parmesan in a bowl.

For my version, I added a bit of ham. It was wonderful. And I can't say enough about how much I love this book. Perhaps it was the quest, perhaps it was Nigella, perhaps it was the first recipe being for peas, but I love it. Frankly, I have long been a fan of Anna del Conte after finding her Gastronomy of Italy. This book is a much more personal journey. Check out our review of Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes,

In the meantime, be on the lookout for you own copy of Entertaining All'Italiana.

Heart of the Artichoke

David Tanis is a chef. Granted he is the head chef at Chez Panisse, which has a more laid back, ingredient vibe than say... The Four Seasons, but he is still a head chef so you have to think, big old complicated recipes. Here is where Tanis is brilliant. The recipes really do feature the food. The clean, only slightly fussed with, fine ingredients that one really wants to eat. Heart of the Artichoke is Tanis' second book. It follows up on his first book A Platter of Figs which shares the same clean edible and "cookable" recipes.

While I am the first to embrace immersion circulators and having a huge tank of liquid nitrogen in my kitchen, there is something remarkable to be said for some one who can look a a beautiful pile of green beans (how pedestrian) and turn them into Green Bean Salad with Pickled Shallots, a dish that is one the one hand so simple and on the other so complex and beautiful, not to mention it a dish that even the most challenged cook cold pull off with total aplomb.

Don't get me wrong, while I adore the Stand Around Melon with Mint, your basic melon balls with mint sprinkled on the top, there are some very involved recipes, like Pho with its nearly thirty ingredients. But for the most part, these recipes are easy to do and would make even the most finicky eater happy.

How could I resist my favorite poached pears. Tanis says that he often finds poached pears in spice end up coming off like a really bad mulled wine. Here he takes a light and delicate approach.

Spiced Pears in Red Wine

8 slightly under ripe small Comice or Anjou pears
1 (750-ml) bottle medium-bodied red wine, such as Côtes du Rhone
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 whole cloves
A wide strip each of lemon and orange peel

1. Peel the pears top to bottom with a sharp vegetable peeler, leaving them whole, with stems attached and the core intact.

2. Put the pears in a large wide nonreactive pot (enameled or stainless steel) in one layer. Stir the wine and sugar together in a bowl to dissolve the sugar, pour over the pears, and add the aromatics. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Poach the pears for about 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted encounters no resistance. Remove from the heat and let cool, in the poaching liquid, overnight.

3. The next day, with a slotted spoon, transfer the pears to a platter. Heat the poaching liquid over high and boil down until it is reduced by half. Strain this syrup into a bowl and let cool.

4. Use a paring knife to cut a small slice off the bottom of each pear, allowing them to stand up straight. Stand the pears in a deep rectangular glass or plastic container large enough to contain them in one layer.

5. Pour the cooled syrup over the pears. Refrigerate for up to several days. Serve chilled, putting each pear in a soup plate and spooning over a little syrup.

Today is a steamy, muggy summer day. What a lovely end to any meal.