Eating poached pears in winter sounds like a very, well, wintery thing to do, doesn’t it? I don’t eat a lot of fruit, truth be told, but I do enjoy a nice, juicy, soft pear. Emphasis on the soft. Crunchy pears send shivers down my back. Yuk. But cooked? I’d not done that before. So this is what I did.
Ingredients
3 cups (750ml) water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 vanilla bean, split
1/2 cinnamon stick
1 whole star-anise
2 peeled pears
Method
- Combine the water, sugar, vanilla bean, cinnamon and star-anise in a saucepan and gradually bring to the boil before reducing the heat. Then add the pears; bring to a gentle simmer. Cover the pears with a sheet of baking paper and cook, turning occasionally, for 1 hour (or until pears are tender). Remove pears from syrup and put in heatproof bowl.
- Being the syrup back to the boil, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until syrup thickens. Strain through a fine sieve. Pour syrup over the pears, cover all with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 2-3 hours to chill, turning pears occasionally.
- Place the pears on serving dishes. Serve with syrup poured over the top and ice-cream, if desired.
Notes
- I didn’t read the recipe all the way until the end when I began and therefore this turned out to be more time consuming than I thought. If I did it again, I’d probably prefer to serve it hot, rather than cold.
- The syrup didn’t reduce as much as I would’ve wanted, but that might just be an indication of my impatience.
- I used bosc pears, although the recipe originally called for packhams.
- They do look pretty with lovely vanilla specs coating the flesh.
This is week twenty-seven of the 1 recipe a week for a year ‘living list’ challenge. (27/52).
