I know what you are thinking, “who puts pear with pasta and gorgonzola”…was I right?  Well I never thought of putting pear with pasta until recently and let me tell you…I just loved it!  I have to share how this pasta dish with pear and gorgonzola came about.  I am currently teaching cooking classes at the Conejo Valley Adult School with my girlfriend Susan (you may recall her as I did her Thumbprint Cookies back in December) and together we are doing a “Fall Series” collection of recipes which included a class on “appetizers” and then last week we did “sides”.

For the sides class I was baffled as I had offered to do a “fall” pasta dish and I really wanted a recipe to knock it out of the park.  I made so many different recipes including pasta, rice and quinoa and here is the thing, I had limitations as I wanted something that didn’t include squash (we already were using squash in other recipes) and I wanted a recipe that didn’t include using the oven…nothing was working for me so I knew I had to reach out to Tim.  Tim was the chef who taught my culinary class, he is very creative and experienced and if you ever need a caterer, you have to try him as you will not be disappointed (click here if you’d like his information), he gave me the inspiration for this recipe.  I have to say I was very grateful he did and so were the students in my class.

Because I wasn’t originally using this for my blog, my photos do not represent the recipe so use the photos as a guideline as I modified the recipe as I went along.  The recipe below is the exact recipe though.

Put your water on to and cook your pasta according to the instructions on the box…in the meantime;

Put some oil in my pan and then put my nuts in the same pan and “browned” my nuts…once browned, I removed my nuts from the pan and left the oil in the pan (in my photo I used hazel nuts but for my recipe I liked the walnuts better, either nuts will work)

I then cooked my sliced shallots in that oil, I cooked the shallots until they were crispy, then I removed the shallots and placed them on the same plate as my nuts

in the same pan of the nuts and shallots, I put my pear in the pan and cooked them down

I put my cheeses in the same pan as the oil and added the shallots and pear to the sauce

I then added my milk

I stirred and let it cook together

I then added 1/2 of my chopped spinach

added my cooked pasta

I tossed my pasta with the sauce and added my now chopped nuts

I tossed it all together and served it warm

I have to say that I was amazingly surprised at how good this recipe was…and when I made it for the students of my class, they loved it too.  I love that Chef Tim gave me the inspiration for pear with my pasta.  Again, I did my dish with hazelnuts but walnuts work out great at well.  If there is a recipe that you have tried that is different and unique and you are willing to share it with me, I’d love to experiment and blog about it.

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Thank you for visiting my site and I hope you enjoy this recipe.  

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Thank you again ~ Patty Limatola-Tanenbaum

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