Pear Poaching

For some reason pears do not like me. I’ve always been fond of these sweeter cousins of the apple, but they tend to keep their distance.

What I mean is that I never seem to get them at the right time. They’re either really hard when I buy them or so ripe they have to be eaten right now or they’ll wind up black and blue. (Oops, too late.) Buying them hard is the safer bet, but then you have to wait out the ripening which can take weeks if it ever comes at all. Blink, and you’ll miss it. Sadly, the pear’s temperamental personality makes using them a bit problematic.

That’s why I cheat.

I don’t go so far into the red that I use canned pears in syrup or anything like that. Not exactly.

I make my own.

I first discovered this diversion when I was making the classic dessert of poached pears.

Note: Despite the bad rap the term has gotten from the black market ivory and blubber industries, poaching food is a perfectly legitimate activity and requires no license from the Department of Fish and Game.

If you’ve never tried them, you should definitely give poached pears a try. You start by peeling the pear and then coring it from the bottom with a melon baller. (So you can’t see the hole.) If you’re serving them whole, tradition dictates that you leave the stem on, then you cook them in simple syrup (equal volumes water and granulated sugar)

You can make the simple syrup more interesting if you like with the addition of spices like cinnamon, cloves, etc. You can even add a cup of Muscat if you like.

To cook, you put the pot of syrup and pears on the stove, bring it to a boil and simmer for about an hour. You can serve them warm or cold. If you’re going cold, chill the pears down in the syrup. Either way they’re great with a couple of spoonfuls of crème Anglaise, the classic vanilla sauce. Crème Anglaise is also the vanilla custard which some folks use as a base for ice cream, which brings us back to this week’s recipe. Pear Ice Cream.

The great thing about poaching the pears is that it doesn’t matter if they’re completely ripe. The cooking process softens them up and gives them an extra jolt of sweetness. The sugar gives them a longer life as well, which is one of the reasons why it’s in that can of pears I was too elitist to use.

Since I still haven’t discovered the solution for using chunks of fruit in an ice cream without turning them into fruit-flavored ice cubes, I went ahead and pureed the pears into the custard. It’s not like chunks of cooked pear would have added much in the way of texture or flavor, but I promise I will do some research about using whole pieces of fruit in ice cream before I try it again. This may just amount to doing a Google search, but I’ll at least do that.

As for the resulting ice cream, it was a resounding success. I served it as a dessert for a dinner party we hosted for my aunt/uncle/cousin-in-law (Do such labels actually exist?) and everyone liked it, even my kids. It was the perfect accompaniment/antidote for the game of charades my daughters roped us into.

You don’t need a license to do that either.

Pear Ice Cream
(about 2 quarts)

1 ½ cup milk
¾ cup sugar
2 T flour
A few grains salt
2 eggs or 3 yolks (pasteurized, if possible, see note)
1 ½ cup cream
6 pears, peeled, cored and poached in simple  syrup

Simple Syrup
4 cups granulated sugar (If you’d like to add more flavorings, be my guest)  dissolved into:
4 cups water

1. Heat milk to 180-190ºF with sugar, flour and salt, stirring until thick, cover for 10 minutes.
2. Beat eggs and add ½ cup of mixture while beating, then add eggs to mixture.
3. Heat the mixture for one minute over medium, then cool with plastic wrap or wax paper pressed onto the top of the mixture to keep it from developing a skin. Cool for several hours or overnight.
4. In the meantime, poach the pears (SEE BELOW).
5. Add the cream and the chilled pears to the cooled custard mix, and freeze. (I let the ice  cream freezer go an extra ten minutes again this week, for a total of thirty-five minutes, but the texture was a bit soft. With six pears, I had a lot more custard to freeze and this might have been part of the problem, but they also changed the custard’s consistency.)
6. Put the frozen ice cream in the freezer for a couple of hours to give it the chance to firm up.

Poaching Pears:

• Start by peeling, coring and stemming the fruit then submerging it in a pot filled with simple syrup. I halved the pears to make them all fit into the poaching pot. Since I was pureeing the fruit anyway cutting it in advance wasn’t a problem. If you’re going to eat them pears whole as a dessert, you’ll probably need to add more liquid.
• Immerse the pears in the simple syrup (dissolve the sugar into the water first)
• Bring the pears to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and continue cooking for 45-60 minutes.
• Put the pot in the refrigerator to cool the pears down for freezing.

NOTE:     When freezing ice cream, you need to use an ice cream freezer to ensure that a certain amount of air is mixed into the frozen cream. This gives it a lighter, less icy consistency. When freezing sorbet, you may also freeze it in a popsicle mold, a bowl or on a sheet pan. Be sure to stir the mixture occasionally to limit the size of the ice particles. Larger chunks of ice make for granita, miniscule chunks make for a nice smooth sorbet (an ice cream freezer is ideal).

Photo Credit: “Pear Poaching,” composed by the author. 

I haven’t run out of ideas yet, but if you have any suggestions about future ice cream recipes, I’d love to hear them. Let me know in the comments section.