Chocolate Pear Muffins

I've never been a huge muffin person but I had quite a few leftover pears from a certain catering event and they were getting pretty soft. I've already experimented with pear sorbet and caramelized pear ice cream this fall (both David Lebovitz recipes that I highly recommend) and have recently been inspired by the muffins at my place of work. So...

Recipe:

I was trying to get the tops right. The top is undoubtedly the most important part of the muffin and to achieve the maximum surface area and crispyness I greased the top of the muffin tray and filled the muffin holes themselves much higher than I normally would-- to the point where I knew they would overflow and run into each other. Then I sprinkled them with brown sugar. It was a pretty successful go.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (divided in half)
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
3 VERY ripe pears, peeled, cored and chopped into cubes
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 450F. Grease 8 muffin cups.

In a small bowl mix flours, baking soda, baking powder and sea salt and set aside. In a separate, larger bowl, cream the butter with the granulated sugar and 1/4 cup of the brown sugar. Beat until fluffy. Add the egg and mix well. Gently mix in the buttermilk. Using a spatula incorporate the flour mix to the butter/sugar/egg mix. Carefully mix in the pear cubes and chocolate chips.
Pull out your greased muffin cups and fill them to above the brim. Fill them more than you've ever filled a muffin cup before. Once you've filled your cups (I only had enough batter for 8) spkrinkle the tops with the remaining 1/4 cup of brown sugar.
Bake at 450 for 10 minutes then turn the oven to 400 and bake for 15 more minutes. Let cool for five minutes in cups then unmold them and move them to a cooling rack.
These will last two or three days (if they don't all get eaten first).

Dinner Party

One of the glorious things about catering is having leftover food, remaking it into a completely different meal and inviting friends over to enjoy it with-- basically for free! After the catering last weekend I had an (honestly) quite absurd amount of grapes left over. What to do with pounds and pounds of extra grapes? Juice them, of course. So I invited a bunch of friends over for dinner and a drink-making competition. Whoever could make the best grape juice mixed drink won a mystery prize.

The meal itself was salmon pasta (the salmon rillette re-made), roasted shallots and butternut squash with parsley and an arugula salad with chopped persimmon and toasted pine nuts. For dessert we had fresh vanilla ice cream with strawberries.

The drink-off got really competitive. We had four teams. There were no rules; just to make a drink that was mostly grape juice and then anything else you could find in my kitchen or backyard. People made speeches and there may have been some fowl play. In the end Will won the mystery prize with his grape juice, gin, seltzer water, meyer lemon, fresh mint and ice concoction. We're going to make this a seasonal event. I am open to suggestions for next quarter's fruit (blood orange, grapefruit?).

PS How great does this compost look? Grape pulp + persimmon slices. Compost really IS beautiful.

Pissalidiere Remade

Last weekend I had my first "catering" event since moving home. A childhood friend's mother just wrote a fantastic children's book called Benjamin and Bumper to the Rescue. I made a bunch of different things: butternut squash and caramelized onion galette, salmon rillettes, persimmon wrapped in prosciutto and a lot more. My favorite was a flatbread with marscapone, black fantasy grapes, rosemary and sea salt.

I learned the recipe for the crust at cooking school over the summer. Its the same dough that the French use to make Pissalidiere-- a classic southern pizza with caramelized onions, capers, anchovies, tomato "petals" and thyme. I remember asking one of the chefs if people ever put other things on pissalidiere. "No!" he screamed emphatically. The chefs were really serious about not mixing and matching recipes. In fact, I'm pretty sure they would have a conniption knowing that I am even trying to call this anything remotely related to a pissalidiere. Next time I play around with this I am going to try gruyere, roasted cauliflower and leeks (maybe with some fried breadcrumbs on top!).

To make the dough:

200 gr. flour

10 gr yeast (I just used one packet)

5 gr. salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

60 ml water

1 egg (lightly beaten)

For the topping:

5 ounces marscapone cheese

40 or so black seedless grapes, halved

2 Tablespoon coarsely chopped rosemary

2 tsp sea salt

drizzle of olive oil

1) Mix flour, salt, sugar in a bowl

2) Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water (use some of the original 60 ml)

3) Using your hands incorporate the egg into flour mixture

4) Pour the yeast mixture and olive oil into the flour/egg mix

5) Knead the dough well for five minutes on a clean surface

6) Make the dough into a ball and put in a bowl. Cover with saran wrap and keep in a warm place (like above pre-heating oven) until the dough doubles in size (at least 1 hr).

7) Flour your worksurface and roll out dough (the chefs were very insistent that it be perfectly round. I feel more strongly that it should be rolled out to your desired thickness). Make the edges a little thicker

8) Spread cheese onto the dough, sprinkle with the halved grapes, chopped rosemary and sea salt. Drizzle with olive oil. Brush the crusts with olive oil.

9) Bake in 400 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes. Make sure the bottom is golden brown.