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Poires Belle Helene with ice cream

To get the sauce on top of the pears, you need to:
a) make sure the chocolate sauce is liquid and warm enough to flow
b) cut off a sliver from the bottom of the pear so that it will stand up straight
c) chill the pears
d) have a dab hand with a spoon resulting in beautiful drips
e) put the end result in the fridge straight away for the chocolate to set.
The problem with the chilling is that suddenly you don’t have the warm pears/hot sauce/cold icecream triumvirate of triumphantly matched tastes, textures and temperatures.
You can do like Delia, and pool the sauce at the bottom of the pears.
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: French
Keyword: Cherry chocolate brownies, Icecream, Pears, Poires Belle Helene
Servings: 5

Ingredients

  • 5 pears peeled, not too ripe, not too hard
  • 2 vanilla pods
  • 200 g white sugar
  • Glass white wine
  • 200 g dark chocolate broken into pieces
  • 5 tbsp single cream optional

For the Icecream:

  • 150 ml of whole milk
  • 100 g caster sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla paste
  • pinch salt
  • 5 large egg yolks
  • 300 ml whole fat creme fraiche

Instructions

  • Peel the pears with a vegetable peeler, retaining the stalks. Cut a tiny slice off the bottom of the pears so that they stand up. I also scooped out a little of the bottom where the stalk ends with a tea spoon.
  • Choose a saucepan in which the five pears fit snugly. Add the vanilla, sugar, wine and top up with water until it covers the pears almost up to the stalk. Poach the pears for 20 to 30 minutes until ‘al dente’.
  • Once tender, remove the pears and reduce the poaching liquid to a syrup, 10 to 20 minutes. ( Don’t let it boil down too much however)

For the chocolate sauce:

  • Melt the chocolate pieces over a ‘bain-marie’, that is a bowl over a pan of hot water (or over the pan reducing the poaching liquid). It’s important that the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Or, you can melt chocolate in a micro-wave, in 30 second bursts.
  • Once melted, add some of the poaching liquid and whisk until glossy. (You can also add a few tablespoons of single cream, for a ganache, or a pear liqueur. I actually used some bay leaf liqueur I bought in Italy, I love bay).

For the ice cream:

  • Make the custard by putting the milk, sugar, vanilla and salt into a medium saucepan on a low heat and heating until amalgamated.
  • Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl then temper them by adding a few spoonfuls of the warm cream into the yolks, mixing well, then pouring the egg mixture into the saucepan with the cream.
  • Keep stirring with a wooden spoon until it achieves a custard like consistency, that is, you can run a finger down the back of the spoon and it leaves a bare wooden streak on the spoon.
  • Then take off the heat and allow the custard to cool for a few hours.
  • Once cool, whisk in the creme fraiche. Then pour the lot into your icecream maker and follow the manufacturers' instructions.