Cheese-filled Roasted Peppers // Walnut-Gorgonzola Tarts with Pear Slices and Pom Reduction Sauce

[zarhooie]

One of synecdochic's recipes (also known as The Suit or Our Fearless Leader). Grabbed from one of her LJ posts.


Cheese-filled roasted peppers

You need:

* Red peppers (one per person, thereabouts)
* Orange or yellow peppers (1/2 per person)
* Cheese -- some nutty and firm variety
* Pine nuts
* Garlic-infused olive oil

Preheat oven to 425*. Cut the red peppers into sections along the natural lines of the pepper, take out the seeds. Cut the yellow or orange peppers into small chunks. Put the red peppers on a foil-covered baking sheet, fill with the yellow/orange peppers, drizzle the olive oil over them, and roast for 25 minutes or until the edges are starting to blacken.

While they're roasting, chop the cheese into small chunks. When the 25 minutes have passed, scatter the cheese inside the pepper boats and add the pine nuts on top. Roast for another 8-10 minutes or until the cheese is just melted. Serve hot.

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Walnut-gorgonzola tarts with pear slices and pomegranate reduction sauce

(This one is way complex. But fun.)

You need:

* Pomegranate liqueur
* Sugar
* Splash of sweet champagne

* Phyllo dough cups
* Gorgonzola cheese
* Walnuts
* A pear

For the pomegranate reduction sauce:

Put about a cup of the pomegranate liqueur, a splash of the champagne, and about two heaping tablespoons of sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce to medium-low heat (just enough to keep it boiling). Boil for about ten minutes or so, until it's reduced by about half the volume and noticeably starting to thicken, but isn't syrupy yet. Let cool. (It'll get syrupy as it cools.)

For the tarts:

Meanwhile, crumble the gorgonzola cheese and chop the walnuts very finely. Put the cheese crumbles loosely into the phyllo cups and top with a spoonful of the walnuts, so that the cheese is about even with the top of the cup, and arrange on a foil-lined baking tray.

Peel the pear. With a sharp knife, carefully produce thin slices (less than 1/8") of pear by holding the pear in one hand and guiding the knife across the top of the pear with the other. (This will produce rounds of varying sizes; it's okay.) Slice them into pieces about the width of your thumbnail, and roughly triangular-ish (or so) in shape.

With the broiler on low, broil the cheese-filled phyllo cups until the cheese is softened and partially melted. Take out of oven.

Working quickly so that the cheese doesn't cool (it's okay to put back in the broiler if it does; you need it to be soft and malleable enough to shove around a bit), you will now pick up each slice of pear, dip into the pomegranate sauce until it's coated but not dripping, and wedge it into the edge of the tart so the bottom part (where you were holding it, and where it's not coated) is buried under the cheese and the remainder is sticking up out of the cheese.

Arrange on a tray, and when you're done, drizzle the remaining pomegranate syrup over top of the tarts.