By March 2023. The food forest trees arrived from the nursery and I spent most of a Saturday digging holes and planting them. Kai came to help—he's ten now and strong enough to be actual help, which is a recent development that I find quietly delightful. We planted twelve trees along the eastern edge of the meadow where the light was good and the creek would keep the water table accessible during dry stretches.
He asked about each variety as we planted it. I told him: persimmon takes years to produce but once it does it feeds the deer and the people both. Pawpaw is shade-tolerant and produces the largest native fruit in North America, which seemed to impress him. Serviceberry is first to bloom in spring, produces berries in June. Hazelnut produces nut clusters in August and feeds everything that lives in the timber.
He said: how long until we can eat any of this? I said: three to five years for most of it, longer for some. He did mental arithmetic and said he'd be fifteen. I said exactly. I said your job right now is to plant them and then wait, and when you're fifteen you'll eat fruit that you put in the ground when you were ten. He considered this and said it was a good plan.
I thought about Danny planting his kitchen garden the first time. He was probably thirty, maybe younger. The garden I learned to cook from was already twenty years old by the time I came along. The persimmons I'm planting now will outlive me. That's not sad. That's the whole point. You plant things whose full life you won't see and that's what makes them worth planting.
That evening after we got the last tree in the ground, I wanted to cook something that honored what we’d planted—not squash or root vegetables, but fruit, the whole reason we were out there. I had a couple of pears on the counter that had finally ripened, and I thought: this is it. Caramelizing them in butter until they go soft and golden is as close as I can get, right now, to the persimmons and pawpaws that won’t be ready for years. It’s a small act of forward memory—eating the fruit of someone else’s patience while we wait on our own.
Chicken with Caramelized Pears
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 oz each)
- 2 ripe but firm pears, cored and sliced into 1/4-inch wedges
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
- 1/4 cup dry white wine (or additional broth)
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/4 teaspoon dried)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Season the chicken. Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels and season both sides evenly with salt and pepper.
- Sear the chicken. Heat olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook 5—6 minutes per side until deeply golden and cooked through (internal temperature 165°F). Transfer to a plate and tent loosely with foil.
- Caramelize the pears. Reduce heat to medium. Add remaining 1 tablespoon butter to the same skillet. Add pear wedges in a single layer and drizzle with honey. Cook without stirring for 2—3 minutes, then turn and cook another 2 minutes until pears are golden and just tender. Transfer pears to the plate with the chicken.
- Build the sauce. Add onion to the skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 4—5 minutes until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more. Pour in white wine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add chicken broth and thyme; simmer 3—4 minutes until the sauce reduces slightly.
- Finish and serve. Return chicken and pears to the skillet. Spoon sauce over everything and simmer 2—3 minutes to meld the flavors. Serve immediately, spooning caramelized pears and pan sauce over each piece of chicken.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 315 | Protein: 36g | Fat: 11g | Carbs: 17g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 390mg