Spiced & Liqueured Poached Bartlett Pears

This is yet another breezy dessert that you can prepare one or two days in advance, stuff into the fridge and bring out on dinner day to thoroughly impress your guests. The flavor improves with keeping for a day or two in fact.

Ingredients:
10 very small Bartlett pears or 5 large Bartlett pears.

1 bottle of white wine + 2 heaped table spoons of caster sugar
If you can find a slightly sweet (but not dessert wine sweet) white, you may omit the sugar altogether. I used a bottle of Strawberry Zinfandel and omitted the sugar.

Zest from one orange. Just use a vegetable peeler. You want the zest in broad strips which you would use for garnishing later, not tiny slivers that you get with a citrus zester.

Some spices: You may use anything in fact, from nutmeg to mixed spice to ground cinnamon.

I used:
2-3 cinnamon quills
5-6 cloves
half a star anise
5-6 whole black peppercorns (not type... they really do work here!)

2 shots of cointreau / triple sec / grand marnier or any citrus liqueur

Method:
The trick is in the way you cut the pears. Choose pears with thick intact stalks that are just about ripe for the best results. What I normally do is buy the pears about 3 days before I want to cook them, leave them at room temperature (warm in Singapore) thus allowing them to ripen to the desired degree.

How you should cut the pears:
This is a little tedious but well worth the effort. How you cut depends on the size of the fruit you are serving.

First of all, peel the pears, ensuring that the stalks are preserved and still attached to the fruit.

I normally slice the bottom off each pear so that the fruit is stable upright.

If using small Bartletts (not so easily available), you may use the entire pear, core with an apple corer from the bottom. Push the corer from the base of the pear until you hit the core, twist and remove the core.

If using larger pears, divide each pear into half. To preserve the stalk on each half, I normally slice carefully from stalk end downwards. I find that if I cut a longitudinal wedge off the perfect half, it is more pleasing aesthetically.

Next you need to poach the pears.

Lay the pears tightly in a saucepan, ideally find one where the pears are snugly packed so that you need the least poaching liquid to submerge most of the pears.

Pour in the entire bottle of wine (and sugar if you are using)

Add your spices, cover and start the fire.

Once the wine is bubbling, reduce the heat to a slow simmer.

Poach for about an hour or until flesh of the pear is slightly translucent. By this, I mean the flesh would've turned a slightly darker tone.

With the wine still simmering, carefully fish out the pears with a slotted spoon and arrange in a small shallow casserole so that the fruit sits snugly.

Increase the heat so that wine comes to a rolling boil and reduce till a quarter to a third of original volume.

Allow the poaching liquid to cool in the pan. Once cool, stir in liqueur.

Pour poaching liquid into the casserole with the pears. Cover or clingwrap and stuff in to the fridge to chill overnight.

To serve, sit pears upright in a shallow dish (with a sauce saving lip). I simply used a sauce dish. Spoon over some liquid, garnish with an orange zest strip and a cinnamon quil.

This is especially refreshing and lovely after a heavy main course.