Be a good poire ! Teach your pears how to swim in wine!

My dear, poor, non-French people,

Let me be a good pear today, or "Une bonne poire":  this is how my French friends call someone who’s always helping everybody, even if people are taking advantage of it. 
It’s nice, at least it’s much better than being “une vraie dinde”, “a real turkey”, which is how we call people who are stupid and brainfree, I would say…

Anyway, after all your stomach has suffered last Thursday, I’m sure you’ll love this delicious and healthy dessert.

Les poires au vin

Ingrédients

4 pears

1 bottle of red wine

3 tbsp honey

1 tbsp vanilla seeds

3 Cloves, Anise, Pepper

This recipe is actually very similar to the strawberry wine soup I wrote about this summer. Let’s say it’s the autumn, warm, version of it. 
It’s the perfect way to end a good meal : no need for another big fluffy pie that will only stay on your hips and not on your palate as a souvenir…

I love doing it too because it reminds me of winter time and skiing vacation: you actually cook the fruits in something that is very similar to vin chaud, mulled wine.  

The best after a day of slaloms in poudreuse, powdery snow. (Or, after visiting half a dozen fromageries for the best Tomme de Savoie: why ski when you can prepare a Raclette or a Fondue?).

Poires are such great autumn fruits! 

Where I come from, in the Center of France, they are deeply used. 
You can find "poires tapées" (beaten pears): pears that are pealed and dried during three days in special wood ovens, and then "beaten" with a special instrument and laid in a traditional basket. 

But my favorite is la poire my grand father used to make with the fruits left at the end of the season: a pear brandy he would always serve to his good friends at the end of a great meal. 

Adults would sip a glass of this gorgeously perfumed "eau de vie" (litteraly "water of life") while we kids would try not to be seen trying to soak a sugar cube in their glass: it's called "un canard", a duck, and it's a little piece of drunken sweet heaven...

"Eau de vie"... almost like water, makes you really feel you're alive!

La recette

Put the red wine to a boil

Add the spices: the cloves, the star anis, the vanilla, and a little bit of pepper
 
Melt the honey in it

Peal the pears, leaving the stem and gently plundge them in the wine

Put on sim and Cook for 25 minutes

You can eat them warm, but I prefer them cold, they can be kept in the fridge for days.

Bon appétit les amis!

Hey pal! Come and enjoy these palets!

My poor non French people,

Le monde est petit. Really. It's a small world, and not only in that strange and non-French place called Disneyworld. 
That's what I discovered a few days ago while scrolling on Instagram. 
There it was, a picture of my favorite French petits gâteaux: Palets solognots (my whole childhood is in those two words).

Except that the caption read "Shriini Keshmeshi", which, may I tell you, is no French at all. How could a traditional Iranian cookie look so much as my very French and very perfect palets?
As the investigative reporter I still am, I decided to search this new mystery... in the kitchen of course!

Petits palets comme en Sologne (Raisins cookies made from scratch)

 Ingrédients

4,5 oz butter

4,5 oz sugar

5,2 oz flour

2 eggs

3 oz Raisins

1/3 cup of Rhum

To tell you the truth, I had never baked Palets Solognots before.
We used to buy them directly to one of my mom's cousins, who owned a little fabrique a few miles from our village. 
You would always find palets at a wedding banquet (so good with a glass of Champagne!) or on a sunday afternoon tea.

They taste like paradise (mon Dieu les petits raisins...), but what I loved the most about them was their box, and the picture on it.

Ahhhh Chambord... 
Much more than the liquor (which is totally unknown in France), it is avant tout the most beautiful castle in the world. Vraiment. 

I was a guide there when I was a student, and could talk for hours of the double stairs invented by Leonardo da Vinci, and all the secret stories around king François 1er who had it built (and to whom I was in love when I was ten years old. Yes, there was a small age difference, but what is 400 years when you have love and passion?).

Who would dream of Tom Cruise when you have Francis the First ?

So what are you waiting for? Go to your kitchen, get the eggs and butter from the fridge, and let's bake!
If you need music to cheer you up, I suggest listening to Catherine Deneuve singing and baking in the fairy, romantic, musical, French and perfect movie "Peau d'Ane" by Jacques Demy...

And where does Donkeyskin's father live ? In Chambord of course.

And now...

LA RECETTE

Marinate the raisins in the rhum for at least an hour.

Finish the rhum bottle. (No! Don't! It's a joke! You non-French people always believe everything!)

Preheat the oven at 400°F

Soften the butter, then mix it with the sugar 

Add the eggs

Mix them all so that the batter turns to a golden Catherine Deneuve's hair color

Add the flour and the raisins, with the rhum.

Mix it all and lick the spoon 

(yes, it's not good for your hips, but c'est si bon for your heart...)

Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets

Bake for 10 minutes: the outline of the cookie must have changed color

 

Et voilà!

Now, after eating half a dozen palets and cooking plently, I'm afraid I can't tell you why this recipe is exactly the same as the Iranian one. (Except that the French version adds alcohol... a leopard can't change its spots...).

Maybe a French princess left Chambord for a handsome Persian prince. 
She brought the recipe with her, and when he tasted it the prince of Persia loved it so much that he said thank you in Farsi. "Merssi". 
And that's why French people say Merci...

It's never bad to dream for a while...

Bon appétit les amis!