A perfect light dessert with a little chocolate treat! A poire belle Helene is a poached pear, covered in dark chocolate sauce. There is nothing very technical in it. This recipe includes a small crumble, if you have some biscuits, you can omit the crumble and serve with a biscuit.
Serves 6 people
Ingredients:
For the poached pears
- 1 beurre-bosc pear per person, not too ripe
- Juice of 3 oranges
- 2 cups of dry white wine
- 1 roll of cinnamon
- ½ vanilla bean seeds scrapped
- 3 star anises
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1 lemon juice
- 6 cloves
- 5 grains all spice – whole (can omit if you don’t have any)
- 1 to 2 cups of water
For the crumble
- ½ cup of shelled pistachios
- 1 cup of plain flour
- ½ cup of brown sugar
- ½ cup of soft (not melted) butter
For the chocolate sauce:
- 100 g of 70% cooking chocolate in pellets or cut into small pieces
- 2/3 up of the poaching sauce
Method:
- Peel the pears being careful to keep the stem. Once peeled, extrude with the the end of a pointy knife the bottom end to remove the seeds.
- In a saucepan, place all the poaching ingredients. Only put one cup of water at this stage. Bring to a simmer. Once the sugar is dissolved, place the pears in the saucepan. Add just enough of the last cup of water to cover (there may be little parts sticking out, don’t worry).
- Simmer for about 30 minutes or until soft when inserting a skewer in a pear. For those pears slightly sticking out, roll them from time to time.
- Leave to cool in the saucepan away from the heat until needed.
- For the crumble, place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until combined. Spread on a baking sheet, and bake for about 10-15 minutes in an oven on 180°C. Make sure to stir through every few minutes to ensure the crumble pieces do not stick to each other. When it comes close to 10 minutes, it tends to cook very quickly, so watch out to avoid burning it.
- When the crumble is ready, remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
- For the chocolate sauce, pour 2/3 cup of the hot poaching juice on top of the chocolate, stir until melted.
- To serve: place a pear in the middle of a place, standing up. Use a ladles to pour the chocolate sauce right over the stem of the pear until fully covered. Place 2 tablespoons of the crumble on one side of the pear. Serve.
Note: the pears can be room temperature or warm.
