Spiced Poached Pears

A very light and refreshing dessert. Looks very elegant and gourmet. If you have never tasted this recipe, you got to really taste it :)

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
2 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves
1-2 bay leaves
1 star anise  
1 orange

2 cups Port 
    [You can select any good local red wine. You need not go for an expensive red wine. For tiramasu recipes you can alternate red wine with white wine]

4 firm Bosc pears

    [Here I should tell you more about picking the correct pears. For this recipe go with   the Bosc pear. As the Bosc pears flesh is more denser, crisper and smoother. 

When picking the Pears in the market, it should be firm not very ripe. If its very ripe, it it turns out to be very soggy. Make sure you select a good one]

Procedure:

• In a thick bottom saucepan, on medium heat boil water, wine, sugar, 1 orange zest, dried spices. Get it to a good boil. Dont get tempted to add more sugar ;) but hold off from adding more sugar.

• In the mean time peal the pears, try to preserve the steam.
• Cut the pears into 2 halves, in a melon scooper scoop out the seeds [see the pic you get an idea] 

• You can also use the whole pear instead of cutting into 2 halves. But I prefer halves as I feel its a good potion for serving. If you making with the whole pear, de-seed the pears using a sculpting knife and flatten up the bottom of the pears so that you will be able to make it stand.
• Once the liquid has come to  a good boil immerse the pears slowly. Immerse all the pears completely, else the pears which are partly immersed dont get a good color.
•  Take wax paper, trace out the lid of the saucepan and cut the round.
• After immersing the pears, put the wax paper on the top of the liquid and cover the lid.
• On low heat let it simmer for about an hr or hr an a half until the pears are translucent and soft to touch but not mushy, it should be still sort of firm... [I know this sounds little complicated...but its really not :) ]

• Once its done, turn off the heat. Let them cool in the syrup and refrigerate.
• Remove the pears slowly from the liquid.
• On medium heat allow the syrup to reduce. Till it gets a syrup consistency.
• You can use this syrup to serve on the Poarched Pears or you can also use it a topping for icecreams or even for cake moisting.

You can prepare this dessert in advance, you can store in a container in the refrigerator to 2 weeks. If you are making more quantity of pears, you can reuse the liquid(before reducing it to syrup) for poaching more pears.

Serving suggestions:

Keeping the corner of the stem intact, run a sculpting knife to clear slices like a Chinese fan.

Serve Spiced Poarched Pears topped with reduced syrup.

You can also server the Spiced Poach with chocolate Sauce or Chocolate Ganash.

You can also serve Spiced Poached pears with  a scoop of Vanilla ice cream.

Serving the whole poached pear would look like this: [I dont have a picture that I took of the whole pears,so I borrowed this pic from fisherpaykel. This is just to give you an idea.]

For kids, you just need to replace wine with cranberry/apple juice. Check out my kid's friendly recipe here: Poarched pears kids friendly recipe

Poarched Pears - Kids friendly recipe

For a kids friendly recipe, follow my instructions as given in the Poached Pears Recipe but simple replace Wine with Cranberry Juice. Reduce the sugar by half, as the juice is already sweetened.
You can also reduce the spices to just use 1-Cinnamon stick or a vanilla bean, as kids dont prefer too spicy.

Serve with a scoop of ice cream... Yummm delicious & healthy too.