Poached pear in spiced red wine

Largely adapted from Sara Buenfeld?s recipe

Ingredients:

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 bottle red wine

225g caster sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

6 pears, peeled, but kept whole with stalk intact

Method:

In a large saucepan, put in the wine, sugar, cinnamon, cloves star anise and vanilla extract and bring to boil until sugar dissolved. Turn heat to medium and add pears into the pan.Poach the pears, covered, for 20-30 mins, making sure they are covered in the wine. The cooking time will very much depend on the ripeness of your pears - they should be tender all the way through when pierced with a cocktail stick. Take the pears out of the pan and let it cool before putting them in the fridge. Boil the liquid to reduce it by half so that it's syrupy. Serve each pear with the cooled syrup and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!





Note: You can make these up to 2 days ahead and chill.