Roasted Pear and Hazelnut Crumble
Roasting the pears first drives off the water that otherwise turns the bottom of a crumble to soup. The topping has more nuts than flour in it, so it stays properly craggy.
- Prep 20 min
- Cook 55 min
- Total 1 h 15 min
- Serves 6
- Vegetarian
Method
Step 1. Heat the oven to 200°C fan. Toss the pear quarters with the butter, sugar, lemon juice, ginger and salt in a roasting tin and roast for 25 minutes, turning once, until they have taken colour at the edges and there is a thick syrup in the tin.
Step 2. Rub the flour and cold butter together with your fingertips until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs. Work quickly and lift your hands high — warm hands make a pasty crumble.
Step 3. Stir in the sugar, hazelnuts, oats, flaky salt and cinnamon. Squeeze handfuls of the mixture and let them break apart, so there is a range of sizes from dust to walnut-sized clumps. Those clumps are the good bit.
Step 4. Tip the pears and all their syrup into a baking dish. Spoon the crumble over in a loose, uneven layer. Do not press it down or pat it flat — compressed crumble bakes into a lid.
Step 5. Turn the oven down to 180°C fan and bake for 30 minutes, until deep gold on top and bubbling at the edges.
Step 6. Leave it for 10 minutes before serving. Straight out of the oven the fruit is hot enough to hurt.
Notes from the kitchen
- Conference or Bosc pears hold their shape. Ripe Comice collapse to purée, which is fine but is not a crumble.
- The crumble mixture freezes raw for three months in a bag. Scatter it over fruit straight from the freezer and add 8 minutes.
- For a vegan version, use a firm block plant butter in both places — the kind sold in a wrapper, not a tub — and it behaves almost identically.
