Saturday Kitchen - Poached pears in spiced red wine

This is good stuff as a pudding and is fat free





Ingredients - this recipe serves 6.

1 vanilla pod

1 bottle red wine

225g caster sugar

1 cinnamon stick , halved

fresh thyme sprig , plus sprigs to serve

6 pears , peeled, but kept whole with stalk intact

Method -

Halve the vanilla pod lengthways, scrape out the black seeds and put in a large saucepan with the wine, sugar, cinnamon and thyme. Cut each piece of pod into three long thin strips, add to pan, then lower in the pears.
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. You can make these up to 2 days ahead and chill.

Take the pears from the pan, then boil the liquid to reduce it by half so that it's syrupy. Serve each pear with the cooled syrup, a strip of vanilla, a piece of cinnamon and a small thyme sprig.

Per serving

235 kcalories, protein 0g, carbohydrate 51g, fat 0 g, saturated fat 0g, fibre 2g, sugar 51g, salt 0.3 g

See the BBC Good Food website for more details.