Daring cooks challenge: Braised pear with caramelized fruits

 The March, 2012 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Carol, a/k/a Poisonive – and she challenged us all to learn the art of Braising! Carol focused on Michael Ruhlman’s technique and shared with us some of his expertise from his book “Ruhlman’s Twenty”. 

So there, I did my first challenge at THE DARING COOKS. I can't believe that School got so busy that I didn't cook for the last 1,5 months. I am LUCKY to have a boyfriend feeding me, otherwise I would be probably found over a strategy book dried out. It is my first challenge and I already had to take advantage of the grace period and CHEAT a little bit. Due to the time I wanted to choose something easy and fast so I braised a fruit instead of Meat or VEGG.

Anyways it was enough of FEELIng sorry for myself, here is a recipe for you.

Braising liquid:
2 hard PEARS pealed
0,75 L Red Wine
200 gr sugar
cinnamon
NUTmeg

Caramelized FRUITS:
Some Cherries
BLUEberry jam
SUGAR

Decoration:
Cocoa vinegar (Can e replaced by Dark ChoColate)
some HAZELNUT

Put the wine into a small pot with the SPICES and put it over the gas. It is handy if you put the cinnamon in one piece or put the spices in a small bag so they are not FLOATING around. When it comes to its boiling point, keep it on low gas, put the PEARS in and cover it with a lid. Cook it until the pears got really dark and than take them out and put them to a COLD place.

Your next step will be to get rid of most of the juice (give it to boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/wife, basically anyone in the need of SUGAR) and leave about 2 spoons in the pan. Put an Handful of cherries and one tablespoon blueberry jam in it. Put some sugar on top and cook it until it gets thick.

Cut the side of the pears and move it slowly. Decorate it with crashed hazelnut.

I've decorated the plate with the earlier mentioned cacao vinegar, but you can replace it with Melt DARK chocolate.