Poached Pears and Granola Over Ice Cream
Ingredients
4 Pears (You can use bosc pears. Those are fairly easy to find. If you can find them, try using a Japanese variety of pear. I found a Shinsui Pear and it tasted like vanilla and citrus. Very cool)
¾ of a bottle of red wine (Beaujolais is a good wine to get for this. They can also be pretty cheap)
3 oz bitter Amaro (This is not necessary but will add extra depth to the reduction. Also, it’s good to keep amaro around)
2 oz dark rum
1 oz honey
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves
5 whole cardamom pods (Crushed lightly to open them up)
Zest from ½ an orange
2 cups granola (You should use about ½ a cup of granola per pear. See the granola recipe for a great one to use)
Ice cream (If you can find or make ginger ice cream, I highly recommend it. Otherwise, a high quality vanilla works great)
Maldon salt
Kosher salt
A medium sided pan
A fine strainer/colander
Instructions
Using a peeler, peel the pears. Cut them in half and, using a small spoon, remove the seeds . Be careful not to take off too much of the fruit itself.
Pour the wine, amaro, rum, and honey into the pan. Sprinkle a hefty pinch of kosher salt, add the cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon, turning the heat up to medium-high. Bring the pan to a simmer and add the pears, cut side down. The pears should only be about ⅓ submerged in the liquid. Once you add the pears, turn the heat down to medium or medium-low, depending on your stove. You don’t want the liquid to reduce too quickly.
Keep the pan simmering and, for about 5 minutes, spoon the liquid over the exposed parts of the pears. They will start to turn a light red color as you do this. It can actually be really relaxing. Leave the pears poaching on the stove for about 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, flip the pears over and continue to poach for another 10 minutes. After this, flip them back over to the cut side and cook the mixture until it is really thick. It should stick to the back of a spoon. This will cause the pears to have a thick coating of sauce on one side which is absolutely delicious. You can really cook this down pretty far. I took a half bottle of wine down to less than an ounce of reduced sauce and it was mind-blowingly good. The risk is always burning it, so do what you are comfortable with.
Set you pears aside and strain the sauce through a fine colander into a small bowl. Set it aside, we’ll use that in a second.
Do this for each pear: Grab a bowl, put in two scoops of ice cream, sprinkle ½ cup of granola, and place the pears on the top drizzle the wine reduction sauce on the ice cream and finish with a small sprinkle of Maldon salt. Enjoy!