Pear-potato gratin with rosemary and Boursin

 

This is one of those recipes where you look at all of those ingredients and figure it can't be anything but stellar, because I adore all of those ingredients separately. I made this on New Year's along with lamb chops with a balsamic vinegar-orange honey glaze.

Pear and potato gratin with rosemary
From Better Homes & Gardens, November 2020

Ingredients
12 ounces yellow potatoes (about 3 medium)
2 Bosc pears
1 5.2-ounce package herbed Boursin cheese
¾ cup half-and-half
4 tablespoons grated Parmesan, divided
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary, plus more for garnish
½ teaspoon lemon zest

Method
Preheat oven to 375. Slice potatoes about ⅛-inch thick. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add potatoes and simmer for 3 minutes. Drain and let cool slightly.

Peel pears and slice in half. Remove cores. Slice lengthwise ⅛-inch thick.

Place potatoes and pears in a 1½–quart gratin dish, alternating them.

In a small saucepan, combine Boursin, half-and-half, 2 tablespoons Parmesan and salt. Whisk over medium low heat until just melted. Stir in rosemary and lemon zest. Pour over potatoes and pears in pan. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese and more chopped rosemary if desired.

Bake, uncovered, for 40 minutes until tender and golden brown. Let stand a few minutes before serving.

Serves 4, but not generously.

Rating: As I said, I expected to love this dish. I did not mind this dish at all; it was fairly pretty, more than reasonably tasty, and yet disappointing because I had set this up in my mind as the holy gratin grail in advance. Examined rationally, I would say it got a tad dry, so next time I might up the liquid component, since it probably needed to cook that long both to get tender and brown. Also, while I love pears, they are inherently a bit grainy, and that texture component wasn't entirely pleasing in this context. So this recipe goes into the pile of promising, but in need of refinement. It's good enough to be worth pursuing, at any rate.