"Burnt Asian Pear with Cayenne." Yes, that's what the label says but is it something to eat with expensive cheese or a sad canning disaster from 2009?
Both, I would argue.
Last summer, after a particularly fruitful urban forage bike trip, I made Asian Pear "applesauce." After washing and chopping the fruit, Adam and I started watching a movie while the fruit simmered in water. During the movie, I added brown sugar and cinnamon to make a tasty spiced applesauce. After tasting it, I added more sugar and cinnamon because it still wasn't sweet. In fact, it tasted weird and...spicy? I added more cinnamon in an attempt to mask the strange flavor.
After the movie, I realized that in the poor lighting I had mixed up the ground cinnamon and ground cayenne!
My pear sauce was spicy because I had accidentally added cayenne pepper :(
Plus it burned a little. Hahahaha!
Adam thought it was funny and we decided to can it and save it for a Holiday party where we could somehow serve it with cheese or something.
The jar sat on the shelf for a year until one day last week when I suddenly wanted to try my hand at samosa making. I needed an appetizer to bring to the ward party and I decided to spend my day off teaching myself to make Samosas.
In Indian cuisine, samosas are delicious potato and curry filled, fried dough triangles served with chutney.
After making fabulous baked samosas (see below), I was worried because we had to leave for the church party but I didn't have enough tamarind chutney. Then, I remembered about the burnt asian pear sauce and used it as a base for a surprisingly wonderful chutney. So, I actually did get to use my strange sauce by feeding it to acquaintances at a holiday party
Recycled Chutney
1 cup burnt asian pear sauce (or other fruit sauce like apple, peach, pear, etc)
1/2 cup apple butter (optional)
1 Tbsp (or more) apple cider vinegar
1 tsp (or more) ground cumin
salt
(I've made this chutney a few times and one time I added many additional spices like turmeric and celery seeds, etc.)
The
samosa dough was similar to pie crust dough (2 cups flour, 2 Tbsp butter, just enough water to combine and knead into a stable dough.
The
samosa filling was a made-up potato, carrot, spice mixture mixed with leftover curry that had originally been made WAY too spicy to eat. I also made a spinach and ricotta cheese filling, to use up leftovers.
To wrap samosas, roll small pieces of dough (about 1/12 of the dough) into a 1/4" thick circle. I couldn't find my rolling pin, so I used a tall drinking glass, which worked fine. Cut the circle in half and use a semi-circle for each samosa. Put a spoonful of filling on the dough and fold it up like a triangle while crimping and sealing the edges with your fingers. (The way it's folded, one side will have two layers of dough, FYI, unless you figure out another way....)
Bake at 350 F for 30-ish minutes.
Serve with recycled chutney :)
