Poached Pears

This is one of Alton Brown's recipes from the Food Network. Poached pears are great to serve dinner guests because they make a nice presentation yet are so simple and can be done the day before. Next time I make these I am going to try adding the sugar AFTER I remove the pears from the poaching liquid. I think I would prefer the pears to be more tart and then you would have the sweet syrupy reduction served along side.

Ingredients

• 1 (750-ml) bottle white wine, Riesling or Viognier
• 1 cup water
• 5 ounces vanilla sugar*, or plain sugar, approximately 3/4 cup
• 1 whole vanilla bean, split and scraped
• 4 firm Bartlett, Anjou or Bosc pears, peeled leaving the stem intact

Directions

Place the white wine, water, sugar and vanilla bean and pulp into a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil.

Core the pears from the bottom. Decrease the heat to medium low and place the pears into the liquid, cover and cook for 30 minutes or until the pears are tender but not falling apart. Maintain a gentle simmer. Remove the pears to a serving dish, standing them upright, and place in the refrigerator.

Remove the vanilla bean from the saucepan, increase the heat to high and reduce the syrup to approximately 1 cup of liquid, approximately 20 to 25 minutes. Do not allow the syrup to turn brown. Place the syrup in a heatproof container and place in the refrigerator until cool, approximately 1 hour.

Remove the pears from the refrigerator, spoon the sauce over the pears and serve.

*Vanilla sugar can be made by burying vanilla beans in granulated or powdered sugar—usually in the proportion of two beans for each pound of sugar. The mixture is stored in an airtight container for about a week before the vanilla bean is removed. The result is a delicious and perfumy sugar that can be used as an ingredient or decoration for baked goods, fruit and other desserts. Vanilla beans may be reused in this fashion for up to 6 months.