Roasted Pear and Pecan Salad

I actually made it out of work at 4:30 pm today, for various reasons, which gave me two extra hours in the day I usually don't have. I headed to the gym first, because I needed to burn some calories from all the super rich food I've been eating the past two weeks.

Getting home while the sun was still out was a real energy booster, motivating me to actually cook something (kind of) for dinner. Since I wanted to stay with a healthy meal, I decided to try my hand at replicating a great salad that I had enjoyed at a restaurant in Waltham (the name escapes me at the moment). It included roasted pears so the first thing I did was figure out how to do that.

I followed parts of this recipe to roast the pears.

For the Salad:
3 pears (any variety), peeled and thinly-sliced (I used the three Bartlett pears I had on hand)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. kosher salt (I went with just regular salt)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Toss pear slices with the tablespoon of olive oil and kosher salt. Spread out in an even layer on a sturdy baking sheet or cast iron roasting pan. Roast 7 minutes. Turn over. Roast another 5 to 7 minutes until soft. Remove from oven to cool.

These were the pears, peeled, sliced, tossed in olive oil and salt, and ready for the oven:


To go with the salad, I wanted to add sugar glazed walnuts. Turns out, I didn't have walnuts so I used pecans instead for this recipe from Allrecipes.com.

INGREDIENTS
2 cups walnut halves (2 cups of pecan pieces)
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup water
I also added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Lightly grease a baking sheet. In a 1 quart glass measure, combine walnut halves, sugar, and water - this the pecan mixture before going into the microwave:


Cook in microwave oven on high setting for 8 to 8 1/2 minutes, or until sugar has caramelized. Stir several times during cooking. Keep a close eye on them, as I got lazy the last three minutes of cooking time and didn't stir them. I noticed some of the pecans looked overcooked, but thankfully, not burned. These are how they turned out afterwards:

Pour out onto prepared baking sheet, and separate into pieces. Let cool completely. store in an airtight container. Two words of caution, first: Be careful handling the nuts immediately afterwards, I managed to give myself two tiny second degree burns on the tips of my fingers from trying to pick up a fallen nut from the counter (the sugar mixture gets extremely hot) and second, be sure to pour the nuts onto a sheet right away. I forgot this step and had to hack away at the pecans later because they had solidified into a solid chunk in the bowl.

Finally, I was ready to enjoy my Roasted Pear salad with arugula and mixed greens, goat cheese, the sugar glazed pecans and roasted pears:


Coincidentally, I had just picked up a champagne pear/gorgonzola dressing from Trader Joe's over the weekend, which was perfect with the salad.