Success! Success! SUCCESS!

Dave 1, Recipe Book 0.

I had some pears. They sat in my fridge for a while, slowly creeping past the wrong side of ripe. I hate to throw out food without at least making some effort to eat it first, so it was up to me to figure out how to make something of it. I've learned in the past, that baking overripe fruit with sugar and butter is a high percentage play, so I went for broke. But it wasn't enough to stop there -- it needed something else. Something special.

Booze.

I give you: "Butter-Rum Pear Crisp"

Ingredients:*

Some pears. 4 will do. Mine were D'Anjou pears, and they seemed to work out pretty well.
Rum. About half a cup. Feel free to increase this amount. Dark rum is better; really dark rum is best. Goslings or Myers.
Butter. I went for 4 tablespoons; you could very easily go lower. Needless to say, my result was more butter than rum.
A small lemon. Or some lemon juice.
Oats; about 2/3 cup. The kind of oats that come in a can with some quaker guy on it.
Flour; about 1/3 cup.
Sugar; about...uhh...1/3 cup? Like the butter, this could afford to go lower.
Dried cranberries (or raisins, or cherries, or similar. About...uhhh...1/2 cup)
Crumbled pecans. Or walnuts. Umm...let's say 1/2 cup again.
Spices! Vanilla, Nutmeg, Cinnamon. Good stuff.
1 egg, if you feel like it.
Small casserole dish.

Preheat your oven to 375.
Peel and core the pears; slice them up into 1/4"-thick slices. Toss them in a mixing bowl, and toss them with the lemon juice to prevent browning. Dump in the rum, spices, and dried cranberries (use whatever feels right). Stick the bowl in the fridge to let the pears soak up the rum while to get everything else ready.

Mix up the oats, sugar, and flour. Spray some oil on the casserole dish, then sprinkle about 1/4 the flour/oat mixture on the bottom. This will be to soak up any excess liquid from the pear/rum mixture -- add more if you're gone heavy on the rum. Dump the pear mixture on top of this.

Melt the butter up in a cup. Drizzle a bit into the casserole dish. Mix the rest up with the oat/sugar/flour mix; this will make the "crisp." Spread the crumbled pecans onto the pears in the casserole dish, then spread the "crisp" on top of that.

If you feel so inclined, you can whip up that single egg, pat down the top of the crisp, and spread the whipped egg over that -- this will give the crisp a sort of glaze-topping. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and it didn't detract from the dish at all.

Stick the dish in the oven; cook for 35-45 minutes, or until it seems right. 30 minutes should be enough to make those pears tender and let the rum work its magic.

Consume. Try not to think about how much butter is in each bite.

*I've never put much emphasis on measuring quantities, as my usual cooking amount is the "until it looks about right." This recipe, being highly improvisational, is even less measurement-intense than my usual offerings. If you want to give this a go, just remember: all of these ingredients will taste delicious together. You can work out the ratios later.

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