Dessert Wine and Vanilla Bean Poached Pears

With winter comes two of my favourite things: spices and warm fruit. 

While this recipe is simply four ingredients, it can easily be altered to suit the longings of your taste buds. The wine may be substituted for chai tea, the pears may be subsituted for apples or quince. You could add cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, honey; go crazy.

Here is my take on Poached Pear, with a little help from Donna Hay. 

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Ingredients:

Four Pears, peeled and sliced in two

1 1/2 cups of castor sugar

One vanilla bean

1 1/2 cups of white dessert wine

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. 

Place the halved pears in a baking tray large enough for them to fit nicely. Add the dessert wine and sugar. Then, slice the vanilla bean lengthways down the centre, scrape out the seeds with a knife and add them to the pears and wine. 

Cover the baking tray with aluminium foil and place into the oven for approximately an hour and a half. 

Enjoy warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or double cream and syrup from the baking tray.

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Four Reasons why this Blog Exists

Firstly,

My Family and Friends. So cliché, but so true. For years I've had the idea of starting a blog, but my tendency towards perfectionism has allowed to me to procrastinate and procrastinate. The thought of it not being exactly the way I wanted it to be scared me, but I now know- thanks to some extremely wonderful people in my life- that with projects like this, you simply have to start. So that is exactly what I'm doing. 

Secondly,

I LOVE Hobart. Predominately the food, but the icing sugar-dusted mountain, colourful markets, blossoming flowers and old houses that look like something out of a storybook are pretty decent too. I want people to fall in love with Hobart the way I have, so this blog will be filled with all my most favourite places to visit and eat. 

Thirdly,

I also love cooking, fashion, interior design, lovely gardens, and architecture. So expect to see a lot of that too. 

Finally,

I'm a Journalist in training. When I started my Bachelor of Arts at Utas I wanted the best of both worlds- to become a qualified teacher (the long way), and to stay in beautiful Hobart. While I am only half-way through my degree and even further away from being 100% set on what I want to do at the end of all this, the combination of creativity + career is looking mighty appealing, and the idea of journalism is slowly stealing my heart. So why does this blog exist, you ask? It's my landfill, journal, photo album, recipe book, and portfolio, all mushed into one.