Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
This week in the paper I wrote about Oriana Kruszewski a one-woman Johnny Asian-pear-seed who grows over 20 varieties of the fruit in her Skokie backyard. Unsurprisingly I wound up with quite a few pears that outlasted the research phase of the story. I was surprised to learn that the sweet and delicate Korean Giants I got from Oriana made good cooking pears. She advised that they can stand in for any old tart and sturdy European cooking variety, and there are professional chefs who visit her in the Green City Market that agree. On the day I hung out with her Mohammad Islam, executive chef at LA’s Chateau Marmont and a vet of Sarah Stegner’s kitchen at the Ritz, staked a claim on pears and black walnuts for early December when his Aigre Doux Restaurant and Bakery opens on Kinzie. (“She has the best black walnuts I ever tasted,” he adds.)
Oriana has a simple, intriguing, if not precise, recipe for Snow Pear Soup, a savory/sweet Chinese brew of pears simmered in chicken broth with a translucent white growth known as Snow Fungus (aka “silver ear,” aka yin er). It is said to be good for the respiration in wintertime. “You don’t puree it,” she says. “The Chinese don’t puree soup. That’s what Americans do.”
