BUToday's video: Sargent Choice Cooking: Pear Carpaccio

Walter Dunphy, BUs executive chef, offers up a tasty pear carpaccio to ease the transition from too much turkey and stuffing back to healthy eating. Dunphys take on vegetarian carpaccio, which means thinly carved and served raw, is relatively easy to put together, but it has a lot of unique and distinct tastes, he says. The keys to taking this recipe from boring salad to dinner staple: fresh local produce, artisan ingredients, and polished presentation. Dunphy uses Boston Bibb lettuce, microgreens, and baby arugula for a peppery taste to complement the pear, then tops it with pungent aged Gouda from Smiths Farmstead in Winchendon, Mass. This isnt your run-of-the-mill chain restaurant Gouda, he says. It gives a really dynamite little bite. Dunphy finishes off the dish with a drizzle of 25-year-old balsamic vinegar from the Modena region of Italy (nonpurists can achieve somewhat similar results by reducing regular balsamic by half in a pan). The final product is a great alternative to yet another turkey sandwich. For more Boston University news and videos, check out http://today.bu.edu