INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

We had some people for dinner the other night and I cooked up a great
dessert from The Splendid Table by Lynne Kaspar, which is a  collection
of recipes from Emiglia-Romana. (Published by Morrow, a  few years
ago.) You make a cooking syrup first, and then bake the  pears. I
decided to try the dessert because I wanted to try the  syrup, which
the cookbook called a sapa. Besides, chopping up the  grapes and
letting them sit for a few days made me think they might  start to
ferment. How romantic. I'd be making a kind of pre-wine.  Heat the oven
to 375 degrees. Butter the baking dish (or two dishes,  if you have to)
Put the pears in a bowl and stir them around with the  lemon juice.
This keeps the pears from turning brown during cooking.  Place the
pears and lemon juice in the baking dish, cut side down.  Sprinkle the
cinnamon and lemon zest over the pears. Place in the  oven and bake
until the pears are tender, about an hour. Every  fifteen or twenty
minutes pour one-third cup of the sapa over the  pears. In all you want
to use one cup of the sapa. If the pan juices  are too runny, pour them
off and reduce them over high heat until  they thicken. Pour back over
the pears. Serve the pears warm or at  room temperature, along with the
rest of the sapa in the pitcher.  Garnish with small bunches of red
grapes, if you wish.  By this time, the sapa had mellowed and the
result was exceptional.  It's a classic Italian dish--simple, elegant,
wonderful, full of  flavour. Long live Italian cooking. I used the rest
of the sapa as a)  a quick syrup to pour over ice cream one night and
b) to cook yet  more pears a few nights later. My husband wanted to try
some of the  sapa on his cereal in the morning, but we'd used it all up
by that  time. But it doesn't sound like a very good idea. Anyone
interested  in Italian cooking should look into The Splendid Table.
Although of  course Marcella Hazen's books are the starting point for
all serious  lovers of la cucina italiana.  Posted to FOODWINE Digest
24 Jan 97 by "David L. Rados"  <radosdl@CTRVAX.VANDERBILT.EDU> on Jan
25, 1997.

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Nutrition (calculated from recipe ingredients)
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Calories: 132
Calories From Fat: 3
Total Fat: <1g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 49.3mg
Potassium: 291.2mg
Carbohydrates: 35.1g
Fiber: 7.7g
Sugar: 21.7g
Protein: 1g