This is one of our favorite ways to cook with blue cheese. Layer the sweet slices of juicy pear between the endive and then pour a velvety blue cheese sauce over the top before baking. It's a wonderful dish if you're having guests for dinner but it's also easy enough to make for yourself on a weeknight, and it tastes even better as leftovers the next day. Comice and Anjou pears work beautifully because they hold together when heated. - Sue Conley & Peggy Smith (Co-Founders)

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

1/2 cup heavy cream
3 oz creamy blue cheese (such as Pt Reyes Original Blue)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
6 endive, halved from stem to tip
2 large pears, peeled, cored, halved, and cut into thin slices or wedges

Directions

1. To make the sauce: pour the cream into a saucepan set over medium heat. With your fingers, break apart the blue cheese into the cream. Heat, stirring, just until hot (it's okay if the chunks of blue don't entirely smooth out). Take the pan off the heat, stir in 1 tbsp of the chopped chives and season with pepper. Set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 425F. Butter a baking dish. Any medium baking dish will work.
3. In the baking dish, arrange the endive, cut-side up, alternating stem end and tip. Arrange the pears between each endive half. If you have more endive than can fit in one layer, top with the remaining endive halves, cut-side down. Pour on the cream sauce. The endive should not be submerged. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil.
4. Bake for 15 minutes and then remove the foil. Continue cooking until the cream sauce has reduced slightly and the tops of the endive are browned, another 20 to 25 minutes.
5. Let the dish cool for at least 10 to 15 minutes, and then spoon up and enjoy while still warm. This is also very good cold the next day.

 

You can find Pt Reyes Original Blue in our Good Neighbors: Victory Cheese Box. In addition to an assortment of 4 California artisan cheeses, each purchase includes a $10 donation to the California Artisan Cheese Guild, providing marketing and education resources to our small cheesemakers.