I starting cooking when I was eleven, but I didn’t know how to cook until I was past fifty. Those thirty years in between were spent faithfully following recipes. If I changed the original recipe, I carefully made notes so I could repeat my changes each time. Cooking always started with selecting a recipe before buying the ingredients.

I clearly remember the circumstances when all of this started to change, but not the exact date. I was staging in Gruyères, Switzerland at the Hostellerie Saint Georges. The chef stalked out of the walk-in where the fresh fruits and vegetables were stored with a case of half-rotten pears. As he approached me, the chef swore under his breath at the sous chef who had allowed the fruit to spoil. With my assistance the chef started to pour the contents of the wooden crate into the trash bin—a job that required two people because of the heavy, government-required lid on the container. Since I was a bit bored that morning, I asked him if I might be allowed to salvage some of the fruit and make something out of the unspoiled bits.

At first I had no idea what I would prepare, but it did seem a shame to throw so much sugary goodness away. As I started cutting out the bad parts with a paring knife, I got the idea to make a chutney. So I dumped the usable scrapes into a large saucepan. I added a couple of onions cut into long shreds, a scoopful of granulated sugar, a handful of sultanas, and a few dried chili peppers. I placed the saucepan on one of the induction hobs and powered it on about halfway. In a short while everything was bubbling away. When the mixture started to thicken and the onions seemed cooked, I turned off the magnet and left the saucepan to cool. The chef pronounced my efforts acceptable, and the mixture was jarred for storage and eventual use.

Although that day was significant in my life as a cook, my life didn’t change immediately. It would be many years before I could confidently say that I rarely follow recipes, and that I create most meals based on what is on hand. I first noticed that my wife would ask if what we were eating was written down because she didn’t remember me serving it prior to that night. I would usually say, “No.” Her response would then be, “(Sigh!) Never to be eaten again.”

Now I actively promote learning the principles of cooking and ignoring recipes. In the jail where I teach, all the cooking we do is based on the ingredients and equipment at hand. There’s seldom a recipe in sight.

So what does all this drivel have to do with a poached pear? The pears used for that chutney years ago were tiny ones of some variety that never softened even when they ripened. They were good for cooking, but never suitable for out-of-hand eating. One day, as I was doing my shopping at a local vegetable and fruit market, I saw some small—almost miniature—pears that reminded me of the ones in Switzerland. They were rock hard. I bought some, and after a couple of weeks they were just as hard as when I bought them. I no longer remember the variety, it stated with a “D,” but I haven’t seen them since. So since they wouldn’t be edible raw, I poached them into edibility in an old bottle of chardonnay that had been lingering in my wine closet.

As nice as the little halves of poached pear were, when I set them on various little plates, things weren’t quite right. They looked a little bit lonely. My first thought was to make a sabayon out of some dessert wine that was laying around, but sabayons can be a bit heavy. Then I thought of making a foam. This is the one I made. It produced enough for 6 to 8 servings.