Recipes

Port Wine-Poached Pears

  • Serves

    serves 4

ANDRÉ BARANOWSKI

The recipe for this dessert comes from The New York Times International Cook Book (Harper & Row, 1971) by Craig Claiborne.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup port wine
  • 34 cup sugar
  • 3 (2") strips orange peel
  • 1 (2") strip lemon peel
  • 1 stick cinnamon
  • 4 firm ripe Bosc pears
  • Ice cream, for serving

Instructions

Step 1

Combine wine, sugar, orange peel, lemon peel, cinnamon, and 2 cups water in a 4-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.

Step 2

Cut 1⁄4" from pear bottoms to make a flat surface. Peel pears and nestle them into bottom of pan containing wine mixture. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer, covered, until a knife slides into pears with ease, 50–60 minutes. Remove from heat; let cool. To serve, transfer pears, cut side down, to 4 plates and drizzle some of the sauce from the pan over pears. Serve with ice cream.

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