Pears Poached in Red Wine with Cardamom #recipe by @LeslieKarst

 

It's autumn, which means pear season! Hurrah! So what to do with all that fruit? I like to use them in salads, eat them with slices of cheese, and add them to curries. But here's a fabulous way to prepare pears which is amazingly easy and makes an elegant finish to a nice meal.

 

 

Pears Poached in Red Wine with Cardamom

(serves 6-8) 

Ingredients

5 ripe, but firm, pears

1/2 cup red wine

1/2 cup sugar

4 cardamom pods

vanilla ice cream (optional, for serving)

candied pecans (optional, for garnish)

Directions

Peel the pears, then cut them however you want for the poaching (I did quarters--not pictured--but you could do halves, as well). Make sure to keep them submerged in water until use you poach them, so they don’t turn brown.





Pour the wine and sugar into a pot or skillet large enough to hold all the pears. 



 

Lay the flat of a knife on the cardamon pods and smack it, to get to the seeds, then add the seeds to the wine and sugar.


Bring the wine/sugar/cardamom mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved, and then lay the pears in the liquid to simmer. (You can see that I changed pans at this point, realizing that I needed a skillet rather than a sauce pan to have room for them all):

(sorry about the funky lighting)

Turn them over half way through the cooking, if there isn’t enough poaching liquid to cover them.


When a fork or knife slides easily into their centers, they’re done. Mine took about ten minutes.


Remove the pears from the liquid, and strain out the seeds.


Next, bring the poaching liquid to a boil and cook it until it has reduced to a thick and syrupy consistency.


I ended up with this much syrup.


This much can be done a day or two before you want to use the pears. Just keep them and the syrup in the fridge till you need them.

For my dessert, I laid four quarters on a plate and set a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on top:


Then I drizzled on some of the poaching syrup, and garnished the dessert with candied pecans I’d made some time back and had in the freezer, and a mint sprig.


I was quite pleased. The acid in the wine balanced the sweet syrup and ice cream, and the cardamom imparted a lovely, but not-too-strong, perfume-like flavor.

 

🌿  🍐  🌱

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