Crackling leaves and nippy mornings, early sunsets and football games. These are sure signs of fall. But it’s a walk through a farmer’s market or the aisles of a supermarket’s produce section, that fires up my longing to cook autumn-style dishes.

Autumn’s pear crop is always a showstopper. Initially, it’s their voluptuous contours that captivate. The long, slender necks and arched stems of Bosc pears, the round, silhouette of Comice. The gentle curves of the bell-shaped Bartlett.

In the marketplace most often, they are as hard as boulders. They feel more like baseballs than fruit. Not a whisper of sublime sweetness. Not a whiffet of sensuous aroma. They are picked mature but before ripened, then kept in controlled-atmosphere storage. Tree-ripened pears get mushy because they ripen from t

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