Poached Pears

It's been a while since I've done a food post here. No time like the present!

I hit the market on Saturday and perhaps overbought.



I live alone.

So I have all these sugar pears to do something with. Dinner was mostly raw veggies in salad-form (also getting rid of some of the pile). So I decided on poached pears for dessert.

Using these:



That would be the pears (I ended up using 4), a vanilla bean, candied ginger, cloves, allspice, a dried lemon, and cinnamon. All of this would go into the syrup of water (1L), sugar (1/2 cup), maple syrup (1/2 cup), and blueberry honey (2 tbsp).

I warmed the syrup up to dissolve all the sugar. While this was happening, I quickly peeled the pears and halved/quartered and cored them. Then I put the pears and other ingredients seen above in the syrup, over medium heat.

I cut out a circle of parchment paper, with a hole in the middle, and put it on top of the pears to keep them submerged.

I kept the syrup at a low boil and about 20 minutes later, the pears were cooked.



Then I dropped some dried cranberries into the still hot syrup and let them plump up as the pears and syrup cooled.

After cooling, the pears were removed and the syrup strained to remove all the other stuff.

I put the syrup back on the stove on medium-high and boiled it down to about half the starting amount.

Then I got impatient and put the syrup in an ice bath to cool it quickly.

I scooped out some homemade caramel ice cream I have, put a few pears and cranberries on it, and drizzled the syrup on top.



Yah, that ice cream melts fast, and I wanted to eat it.

It was delicious.

And I have leftovers.