After a relaxing weekend walk near Castle de Haar, I walked into this Farmers’ store. They had about 10 different varieties of Apples and Pears from their own orchard available. I love stewed pears, so I bought (among other types of apples and pears) these pears suitable for stewing. In the Netherlands we call them: ‘Gieser Wildeman’.
Instead of cooking these pears in wine, I decided to cook them in Organic Apple Juice. The vanilla and other spices pair really well with these pears. Serve the pears like this or with a few scoops of Bourbon Vanilla Ice cream!
Vanilla Stewed Pears
Equipment
- Cooking Pot
- Peeler
Ingredients
- 6 Pears suitable for stewing
- 2 tbsp Lemon Juice
- 400 ml Organic Apple Juice
- ½ Vanilla Pod or vanilla extract
- ¼ Cinnamon Stick
- 1 Star Anise
- 2 Cardamom
- 2 tbsp Sugar
- 1 tsp Cornstarch
Instructions
Preparations
- Peel the pears and place them in the cooking pot. Then pour in the apple juice, sugar and lemon juice.
Cooking
- Cut the vanilla pod in half whereafter you pull apart the vanilla pod. Scrape the seeds out of the bean and add those, and the scraped out vanilla pod, to the cooking pot. Then add the crunched cardamom pots, cinnamon and star anise.
- Bring the apple juice to a boil. Cook the pears until soft on a low heat. This probably takes about one hour.
- Carefully take the pears out of the cooking pot. Have a quick taste to see if you want to add more sugar or lemon juice. If you want a more concentrated sauce, you can also let the sauce cook and reduce a bit more.
- Mix the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons of cold water. Add the mixture to the cooking liquid and bring it to a boil. Let it cook until thickened.
Serve..
- Serve the pears with the sauce! And maybe a few scoops of vanilla ice cream..