Patina de Piris

Pear Pudding

The original recipe is a bit sparse on direction.   This is one of those recipes where you really need to know what to do in the kitchen…but once you know what you are doing…the sky is the limit on how to blend these ingredients together for a most wonderful tasty treat!

Translation:

A pear patina: grind boiled and cored pears with pepper, cumin, honey, passum, garum, and a bit of oil.

Flower, pg. 109./Herklotz, pg. 172-173

*Passum: a sweet raison wine.  (If Passum is not available either to buy or made, use a sweet mead or rose hip wine.  The main feature to remember is that you want a sweet dessert wine to compliment the pear taste.)

Ingredients:

5 pears   (Peeled and poached)             1/3 – 1/2 cup of  honey

1 tsp  ea of ground pepper, cumin and fish sauce

1 C.  sweet wine          2 eggs            1  C.  cream

1tsp olive oil

My Redaction:

When I first read this recipe, translated the boiled pears as to be poached.  Roman’s loved their cooking far to much to just “boil” in water if wine was to be had on hand.   So with that in mind, I took 5 Bartlet pears (very firm) peeled, cored then poached in mead.  

Now these pears were allowed to steep for about 5 hours in the mead for yummy maximum goodness (and I was crazy busy after I had finished poaching them.  So I turned of the stove and let them steep…a loooong time.)

After the pears were removed from their decedent mead bath (this is a Roman dish…and what is Rome with out a decedent bath some where?!),  I mashed the pears into a rough consistency and added the spices, honey and wine.

Now you may be going at this point…Fish Sauce!!! in a dessert!!! Ewwww.  Now now…don’t judge.  Try this once WITH the sauce.  It really makes the dish.  Like all dishes that have fish sauce, a little will do wonders…don’t go overboard or yes the dish will taste of fish.  As the saying goes, “A dab will do you!”.

Now this is the mashed pears with all of the spices, honey and wine.   The pudding consistency will depend on how much or how little wine is used and eggs are added.  I like my pear pudding a bit on the wet side.  When I reach for a ladle of this sweetness, I have extra juice.    Just the perfect amount to add short bread cookies to, for sopping up the excess.   If you prefer a dryer pudding (one that is firm and not dripping with extra wine sweet spiciness, cut the wine by half and add an extra egg.

Once a consistency is decided upon, pour the pudding into your pottery dish (or pudding dish) and cook till golden on top.

I had a little extra browning on the edges here while waiting for the center to firm up a bit.  Keep an eye on the pudding through out the cooking so that over cooking (or even burning) does not occur.

Now I eat this with candle light and a spoon in a hot tub.  Pfft…ok I would if I had the hot tub and the time to light the candles!  This dish is a sweet rich  confection that is just amazing.   I might suggest serving shortbread cookies on the side as a way to cut the rich sweetness of this, but then again everything goes with shortbread cookies and pear pudding.