My New Favorite Winter Dessert

When your parking lot looks like this:



Your only option is to get into these:



And make this:



About eight months ago, while discussing Vegan desserts, Tara told me how Eric made her these poached pears in black tea, and served them with chocolate and soy ice cream. Since then, I've rolling it around in my head, and Thursday I decided to finally do it. Especially since everywhere I turned in the grocery store, there were pears and more pears. It was like they were IN SEASON or something.

So here's the deal: this is the kind of recipe that is only a baseline. You can, and should, try this with any kind of flavor combinations you can think off. Pears are wonderfully flexible, they're like the tofu of the fruit world. You never quite know what this will taste like. Thursday night it tasted of peach cobbler. Saturday night tasted like berry apple pie.



Ingredients:

3-4 pears (serves 3-5 people)
3 bags of tea
a cup of dried fruit
honey
ice cream

1) Peel and slice the pears. Remember that sometimes your friends knives' are actually sharp and don't cut the tip of your finger off like I did. Blood everywhere. Almost fainted. It was awesome.

2) Boil a cup and a half of water. Then let the tea bags soak for about five minutes. Add in honey to taste, and anything else you feel like. Wine, fruit juice, coconut milk. I bet hot chocolate would be good in there too.

3) Place the pears in a small oven proof dish. At this point, remember to preheat the oven to 475. Throw the dried fruit in there too.

4) Pour the boiling tea mixture over the pears. Cover with foil. Bake for approximately 20 minutes.

5) Let the pears cool a little. Then cover them with your choice of ice cream, and chocolate shavings or cookies or whatever. Amaze your friends with your super creative flavor profiles. Also, if I ever use the term flavor profile again, except in a mocking tone, please remind me not to be a douchebag.

For the Thursday night version, pictured below, I poached the pears and some dried figs in Oolong tea, with honey, lemon juice, and half a cup of coconut milk. Then we topped them with green tea ice cream and dark chocolate shavings...and yet, really, this was peach cobbler. Which was really really good.



IT WAS SO WARM AND YUMMY AND YUMMY....I had to make it again on Saturday when I went to Marty and Rebecca's. Only this time Rebecca, who can't have caffeine, requested I use an orange-spice herbal tea.

So I used orange tea, with a half a cup of red wine, a small dollop of honey, and a large amount of dried tart cherries. Then I garnished it with chocolate florentines and straight up vanilla ice cream.





That was exactly what three people in pajamas,snowed in with 3 crazy cats, and a lot of economic repression needed at 10pm.

Speaking of crazy cats, Marty and Rebecca's cats have this nice habit of running through the house scavenging for clothes at night, and throwing it all in their water bowl...my shirt somehow migrated from the guest room to the hallway. And beware, the cats know how to get into drawers.



And to counteract that depressing opening picture, here's Sunday morning, which was cleaning water off the floor and cream cheese lox sandwiches.



And let me tell you, the leftover pear sauce is great in oatmeal, bread pudding, by itself...oh pears, please don't go away. I love you all. D'Anjou, Asian, Bosc, and yes, even you my blushing Bartlett. Words alone can't express my feelings, so lets try song.