A generous local organic farmer was kind enough to give me a bag of pears this past week, which I promptly turned into two PEAR PIES. I believe they were Yellow Bartlett pears, and they were very easy to cut in half, remove the centers, and cut into thick slices. I looked in Joy of Cooking for some ideas of how to flavor pear pies. My memory from a child was that pear pie involved some kind of creamy stuff around it, but I think that's just how my mother made it, and I don't remember it fondly. Yet, pears struck me as being a little more bland than, say, an apple, so I knew it would need to be perked up in some manner.
There was a recipe for baked pears that gave me some guidelines. I ended up adding a little cinnamon, lemon, sugar, chopped walnuts (the part I probably wouldn't have thought of on my own), and a few dribbles of the remains of the lemon-infused vodka. That seemed to do the trick, as the little chewy bits of walnuts were a nice foil to the mushy pears, and the lemon and cinnamon did their perking jobs.
Two Organic Pear Pies
Ingredients
Filling
½ peck of organic pears (about 16)
½ cup organic sugar
1 organic lemon, juiced
½ tsp cinnamon
1 Tblsp. lemon infused vodka, or maybe some white wine
1 cup organic walnuts, chopped
Crust
2 cups organic whole wheat pastry flour
2 cups organic white flour (with the germ added back in — you can buy it that way)
½ tsp salt
1 cup organic sunflower oil (or enough to turn the flours into crumbly mixture)
Up to ½ cup of water (or enough to be able to form dough into a soft pliable ball)
