Eating at Home: Poached Pears

Made this dessert for a dinner party a few nights ago. Simple, simple, simple. This is a great recipe to prep and start after lunch. The pears can poach most of the afternoon and be ready in time for dinner.

Ingredients:
Pears - whichever variety is your favorite
Maple syrup
Apple juice
Cinnamon
Raspberries - frozen or fresh
Orange liqueur (optional)

Instructions for poaching the pears:
Preheat the oven to 350. Peal the pears, cut off a small slice of the bottom so that they will stand upright, and roll them in cinnamon. In a dutch oven, or any heavy pot with a lid, place the pears, and pour in enough apple juice to cover the bottom half of the pears. Cover and place in the oven for 2-3 hours, or until tender all the way through.

Instructions for the sauce:
Place berries in a saucepan and bring their juice to a boil. Add orange liqueur while juices are boiling to ensure most of the alcohol is burned off. If you're not using liqueur, consider using orange zest or a slight amount of orange juice. The citrus really "wakes up" the sauce. Let everything cool slightly and transfer to a blender. Blend until smooth.
For a silkier sauce, I transfered the blended berries back into the saucepan through a strainer to remove any grit. I added just a tablespoon of Earth Balance butter to give it some shine.

Substitutions:
This recipe would work just as well with apples. Either would be appropriate for the fall. You can also use any berry for the sauce. Pears and raspberries were speaking to me in the grocery store, but apples and blueberries would be a wonderful combination, especially with a little nutmeg added to the cinnamon and a few bits of fresh made pie crust on the side. Don't forget the vanilla soy ice cream!

For a different take, you could use a bold red wine as your poaching liquid, which is absolutely incredible, but you would not want to couple this with a berry sauce. Instead, you would want to serve the red wine pears with caramel or butterscotch (vegan preparation, of course).