Baked Pears Stuffed with Wealdway Blue Cheese

Baked Pears Stuffed with Wealdway Blue Cheese - Serves 4

Today we visited the Alexandra Palace farmers market as it is just a short walk from my house – I always love going there as the produce is constantly changing. I never seem to be able to not spend any money, but then, what would be the fun in that?

I picked up some spicy Caribbean sausages from the Giggly Pig Company, some Wealdway ‘blue’ goats cheese (that I used in the recipe below), and some Apple & Ginger juice from Watergull Orchards in Cambridge that was absolutely gorgeous!

This is the recipe exactly as described by the man behind the Wealdway cheese stall at the Alexandra Palace farmers market – I’ve eaten this twice now in less than a week it’s that good.  Unfortunately I ran out of Parma ham in the photo below, but do make the effort to get some – it really enhances the dish visually and tastes great. 

Ingredients

• 4 ripe pears, peeled & cored
• 100g blue cheese (I used Wealdway blue goats cheese)
• 1 pack of Parma ham
• Mixed Salad

Method

Step 1
Peel the pears, then halve and hollow out the pear by removing the core.

Step 2
Stuff the hollow generously with blue cheese

Step 3
Wrap the stuffed pears with either Parma ham, Serrano ham or streaky bacon so that the whole pear is covered.

Step 4
Place the pears on a baking tray and cook for 20 minutes at 180C.

Serving Suggestion
I’ve served this with a crunchy salad using some mixed leaves, peppers and mizuna (a type of Japanese rocket leaf I have been growing in my garden). As with most blue cheese salads, the addition of avocado, rocket, watercress, caramelised red onion or walnuts would work perfectly. You could also quite easily poach the pears instead of baking them.