Success: Crisp!

I've had some trouble over the years perfecting my crisps and crumbles. A few weeks ago I saw a recipe in Sunset for yet another flavor of the noble crisp: Pear ginger. Ooooh, it looked good. I really wanted to eat it. But to eat it, I had to make it and this time I followed the recipe almost word for word. I would not fail the crisp. Since I followed the recipe very closely, I'll just point you to it instead of reproducing it:

Sunset's Pear Ginger Crisp

The main points for success are:

* Use rolled oats! Not instant oats, not steel cut oats. Rolled!

* Toast the streusel topping in the oven before spreading it over the fruit.

* Carmelize the sugar (as if you were making candy- and it will actually harden when you add the pears, but you can melt it again) before cooking the fruit.

* Involves lots of pots, bowls, dishes and pans. A drag to clean up, but worth it to produce each component separately.

Small adjustments I made: I didn't have enough pears, so I added some blueberries to the mix. Mmm! I also used dry cooking sherry instead of marsala, which I didn't have and it tasted fine. I bet a juicy red wine would work, too. I had excess cooking liquid which I reserved and put over leftover crisp before reheating.

Change I would make: the candied ginger I used was really sticky and hard to mince. It ended up sticking together in a ball and someone ended up with a huge bite of ginger when it was all done. Next time I will probably use a mixture of powdered and grated fresh ginger instead, in both the topping and the fruit, and maybe add some nutmeg.