Chocolate sauce - poires belle Helene
Chocolate sauce – Poires Belle Helene
“...they’re not nursery food and it isn’t just nostalgia that makes me dredge them up (Nigella, p244).
I apologise that this blog will arrive finally online during the middle of the week, and not – as usual – on Sunday. I have had – am having – a really busy week at school and with life in general, and whilst I am seemingly never to busy to make and enjoy food, I can be too busy to write about it. Last week, I started helping at the current cookery club at my school. That is, the cookery club which is being run at the moment – before the new one which I will help to organise and run comes into fruition. We made homemade coleslaw and jacket potatoes with fillings. It was very interesting, actually, seeing the logistics of running the club and working in the space which I will later occupy with my own club and my own culinary ideas. I am helping out now every Wednesday until the end of term. In fact, this coming Wednesday we are making vegetable soup. On Thursday 4th December, I am going to another course about running the club, but this time myself and the other teacher who will be running it are taking along 4 children as a kind of “start-up” day for them, so expect me to once again return triumphant and bore you with stories of what I made. I have seen the programme, and whilst it doesn’t look quite as exciting as the food which the adults made on our two-day course, it certainly doesn’t seem anything to turn ones nose up to – mainly involving smoothies, sandwiches and crumble. Okay, smoothies and sandwiches I can live without – depending on the sandwich – but I do have a real fondness for crumble- especially since I have nearly made every crumble in HTE. Bar the rhubarb crumble. As threatened, I will report back!
Anyway, on with the section at hand – the “chocolate” section. I know that it may seem as though I have had a lot of disasters with this section. Certainly, I began my post for the chocolate raspberry pudding cake with much the same lament, but certain that I would approach the recipe ever the optimist. Well, after another recipe which I wasn’t too keen on, I find myself in much the same culinary position. So why – I ask myself – have I not been enthralled – to say the least – with this section so far. Well, it seems to me to be down to one very important factor which all the recipes have in common. So far, and almost without exception, I have found Nigella’s chocolate recipes to be very, very – almost deathly – rich and uber-chocolaty. The kind of chocolaty which seems to wallop you round the head and send you into gluey, bitterly dark, chocolaty overload. And, truth be told, I just don’t have that kind of palate. Whilst it is true that I can shamefully snaffle away my fair share of chocolate at any given moment, I wouldn’t for one moment consider myself a chocoholic and I’m afraid I lie firmly in the “less is more” camp when it comes to chocolate desserts. However, now I have reached that realisation I think that I have reached a turning point. Certainly, I am now tackling each recipe *expecting* it to be very rich and therefore adjusting my expectations – and portion sizes – accordingly. And there is something to be said for the sublime decadence of the super rich dessert. And yes, even I can admit that there are times when we all need that chocolate-to-the-max luxury that only a homemade dessert can offer.
I do hope that I will enjoy this recipe for poires belle Hélène – that’s pears with chocolate sauce to thee and me. I am ashamed to admit that I know very little about this dessert. My knowledge is limited to the fact that is an unashamedly retro dish, which seems omnipresent in every 1970’s brassy-toned and gleaming cookbook (probably next the black forest gateaux!). My knowledge extends a little further than that, because I do know that the origins of poires belle Helene stretch back, even further than that. Nigella alludes to its Victorian provenance, and Wikipedia confirms it! Indeed, I copied and pasted this snippet of information for you: Poires belle Hélène (German: Birne Helene) is a dessert made from pears poached in sugar syrup and served with vanilla ice, chocolate syrup, and crystallized violets. It was created around 1870 by Auguste Escoffier and named after the operetta La belle Hélène by Jacques Offenbach. Simpler versions replace poached pears with canned pears and crystallized violets with sliced almonds.
I know a lot of people who wouldn’t dream of serving something so brazenly old-fashioned, but I have never cared about such matters. Just as I don’t feel that there is really much of a place for age-appropriate and gender specific food, neither do I feel that culinary fads and fancies should dictate what goes on the dinner table. In fact, Nigella sums up my feelings perfectly on this matter, as she writes in HTE: “Just because a food is no longer flavour of the month, it shouldn’t follow that it is evermore to be spoken of as a shameful aberration” (p6). Indeed, I feel with Nigella on this matter, that the *only* guide of good food should be your taste buds.
And it is obviously a recipe which Nigella herself is very keen on. In HTE, it forms part of a “small, but perfectly-formed” dinner, and follows crepes with marinated smoked haddock, but if you ever watch Nigella Bites – and you must do so – it is better than any of her other television series in my opinion – you will notice that poires belle Hélène is actually mentioned as dessert in Nigella’s entirely fictional “last meal of earth” – high praise indeed (it actually follows steak béarnaise, which tempted me to make that as a main course prior to the pears, but I have only recently eaten it as part of a pub meal and I do like a little variety in perhaps the most satisfying aspect of my life – my culinary one). And in Nigella Express, there is a recipe for chocolate pear pudding, which Nigella describes as “a cross between Pears belle Hélène and Eve’s Pudding” (p373). And she shows a telling love for the former dessert, by writing “...bear in mind that canned (or bottled) pears and chocolate sauce – with or without vanilla ice-cream – make a lovely pudding on their own” (p373).
I am very much looking forward to making this dessert. Okay, you know that I like anything which Nigella speaks highly of – there is something so persuasive about the way in which she writes about food – but I do think the ingredients speak for themselves. I love ice-cream and vanilla – good vanilla – is my favourite flavour of all. I also absolutely adore pears as a fruit. They would certainly feature in my top 5 favourite fruit – if you really want to know, my favourite fruit is banana. I have always had a soft spot for pears. I remember adoring them, too, when I was little. The curious thing is that as much as I like them, I haven’t embraced them in my culinary life whatsoever. I do like serving them with good cheeses, bread and grapes occasionally, as part of a semi-cheese-board (as if!) or as part of a very informal lunch, but I have never cooked *with* them, in the literal sense of transforming them from their raw state (that’s not counting the numerous and dire fruit salads which I made in Food Technology and carried proudly home to my poor, unsuspecting parents). So, I am actually very interested – purely from an empirical standpoint and not a greedy one – in what foods I can use pears in. As I say, I do like pears and I am interested in cooking with them more. Poaching them in a light and vanilla-scented syrup seems *the* perfect way to get me started.
In terms of how to serve this dessert, I am going ultra-traditional and serving them exactly as they are intended to be eaten – vanilla ice-cream, poached pair, chocolate sauce and crystallized violets. Very retro, but very delicious. In terms of what to make as a main course, I wanted to stick to that Victorian, nostalgic theme. I wanted to conjure up the culinary memory of good food of days gone by. I decided to opt – therefore – for a rabbit, bacon and mustard pie from that classic of all classic books, “Meat and Two Veg” from Fiona Beckett. And yes, I know I cook a shameful amount from that book (the most recent being the sage, onion and cider gravy last weekend), but it has never let me down and it really does contain some classic recipes. Alongside that very old-fashioned and nostalgic pie, I am going to serve some simple steamed potatoes, tossed in butter and seasoned well, and Fiona Beckett’s charmingly titled, “not at all boring peas and carrots.” The name says it all, I do hope!
In terms of quantities, in HTE they are for 4 people, so I am simply halving them for the 2 of us. I could eat pears for England, but Chris is less keen, so I can always eat his share for him, should I be required to make that sacrifice!
Anyway, on with the section at hand – the “chocolate” section. I know that it may seem as though I have had a lot of disasters with this section. Certainly, I began my post for the chocolate raspberry pudding cake with much the same lament, but certain that I would approach the recipe ever the optimist. Well, after another recipe which I wasn’t too keen on, I find myself in much the same culinary position. So why – I ask myself – have I not been enthralled – to say the least – with this section so far. Well, it seems to me to be down to one very important factor which all the recipes have in common. So far, and almost without exception, I have found Nigella’s chocolate recipes to be very, very – almost deathly – rich and uber-chocolaty. The kind of chocolaty which seems to wallop you round the head and send you into gluey, bitterly dark, chocolaty overload. And, truth be told, I just don’t have that kind of palate. Whilst it is true that I can shamefully snaffle away my fair share of chocolate at any given moment, I wouldn’t for one moment consider myself a chocoholic and I’m afraid I lie firmly in the “less is more” camp when it comes to chocolate desserts. However, now I have reached that realisation I think that I have reached a turning point. Certainly, I am now tackling each recipe *expecting* it to be very rich and therefore adjusting my expectations – and portion sizes – accordingly. And there is something to be said for the sublime decadence of the super rich dessert. And yes, even I can admit that there are times when we all need that chocolate-to-the-max luxury that only a homemade dessert can offer.
I do hope that I will enjoy this recipe for poires belle Hélène – that’s pears with chocolate sauce to thee and me. I am ashamed to admit that I know very little about this dessert. My knowledge is limited to the fact that is an unashamedly retro dish, which seems omnipresent in every 1970’s brassy-toned and gleaming cookbook (probably next the black forest gateaux!). My knowledge extends a little further than that, because I do know that the origins of poires belle Helene stretch back, even further than that. Nigella alludes to its Victorian provenance, and Wikipedia confirms it! Indeed, I copied and pasted this snippet of information for you: Poires belle Hélène (German: Birne Helene) is a dessert made from pears poached in sugar syrup and served with vanilla ice, chocolate syrup, and crystallized violets. It was created around 1870 by Auguste Escoffier and named after the operetta La belle Hélène by Jacques Offenbach. Simpler versions replace poached pears with canned pears and crystallized violets with sliced almonds.
I know a lot of people who wouldn’t dream of serving something so brazenly old-fashioned, but I have never cared about such matters. Just as I don’t feel that there is really much of a place for age-appropriate and gender specific food, neither do I feel that culinary fads and fancies should dictate what goes on the dinner table. In fact, Nigella sums up my feelings perfectly on this matter, as she writes in HTE: “Just because a food is no longer flavour of the month, it shouldn’t follow that it is evermore to be spoken of as a shameful aberration” (p6). Indeed, I feel with Nigella on this matter, that the *only* guide of good food should be your taste buds.
And it is obviously a recipe which Nigella herself is very keen on. In HTE, it forms part of a “small, but perfectly-formed” dinner, and follows crepes with marinated smoked haddock, but if you ever watch Nigella Bites – and you must do so – it is better than any of her other television series in my opinion – you will notice that poires belle Hélène is actually mentioned as dessert in Nigella’s entirely fictional “last meal of earth” – high praise indeed (it actually follows steak béarnaise, which tempted me to make that as a main course prior to the pears, but I have only recently eaten it as part of a pub meal and I do like a little variety in perhaps the most satisfying aspect of my life – my culinary one). And in Nigella Express, there is a recipe for chocolate pear pudding, which Nigella describes as “a cross between Pears belle Hélène and Eve’s Pudding” (p373). And she shows a telling love for the former dessert, by writing “...bear in mind that canned (or bottled) pears and chocolate sauce – with or without vanilla ice-cream – make a lovely pudding on their own” (p373).
I am very much looking forward to making this dessert. Okay, you know that I like anything which Nigella speaks highly of – there is something so persuasive about the way in which she writes about food – but I do think the ingredients speak for themselves. I love ice-cream and vanilla – good vanilla – is my favourite flavour of all. I also absolutely adore pears as a fruit. They would certainly feature in my top 5 favourite fruit – if you really want to know, my favourite fruit is banana. I have always had a soft spot for pears. I remember adoring them, too, when I was little. The curious thing is that as much as I like them, I haven’t embraced them in my culinary life whatsoever. I do like serving them with good cheeses, bread and grapes occasionally, as part of a semi-cheese-board (as if!) or as part of a very informal lunch, but I have never cooked *with* them, in the literal sense of transforming them from their raw state (that’s not counting the numerous and dire fruit salads which I made in Food Technology and carried proudly home to my poor, unsuspecting parents). So, I am actually very interested – purely from an empirical standpoint and not a greedy one – in what foods I can use pears in. As I say, I do like pears and I am interested in cooking with them more. Poaching them in a light and vanilla-scented syrup seems *the* perfect way to get me started.
In terms of how to serve this dessert, I am going ultra-traditional and serving them exactly as they are intended to be eaten – vanilla ice-cream, poached pair, chocolate sauce and crystallized violets. Very retro, but very delicious. In terms of what to make as a main course, I wanted to stick to that Victorian, nostalgic theme. I wanted to conjure up the culinary memory of good food of days gone by. I decided to opt – therefore – for a rabbit, bacon and mustard pie from that classic of all classic books, “Meat and Two Veg” from Fiona Beckett. And yes, I know I cook a shameful amount from that book (the most recent being the sage, onion and cider gravy last weekend), but it has never let me down and it really does contain some classic recipes. Alongside that very old-fashioned and nostalgic pie, I am going to serve some simple steamed potatoes, tossed in butter and seasoned well, and Fiona Beckett’s charmingly titled, “not at all boring peas and carrots.” The name says it all, I do hope!
In terms of quantities, in HTE they are for 4 people, so I am simply halving them for the 2 of us. I could eat pears for England, but Chris is less keen, so I can always eat his share for him, should I be required to make that sacrifice!
Ingredients: Most of the ingredients for this can be found easily. It is up to you where you source your pears from. I left school earlier than usual on Friday, so I could stop by our local farm shop for the pears. Not only is the fruit there practically unrecognisable from the usual plastic-wrapped supermarket fruit, but the people who work there are generally much more knowledgeable about the food they grow and stock, and therefore advised me as to the best pears to cook with (I also brought my lemon there!). In terms of the sugar, you can either use vanilla sugar or plain caster with vanilla extract. I opted for the former because I keep vanilla sugar in a jar with my other homespun sugars. Vanilla sugar is ridiculously easy to make – just bung a vanilla pod in a jar of sugar – or you can now buy it in the sprauncier supermarkets, but failing that, use caster. We did our main shopping at the nearby Asda, but once again I did find myself driving to Waitrose the next day for some elusive ingredients. For a start, Asda doesn’t have decent dark chocolate and I wanted to use Valrhona dark anyway, which can only be found in our local Waitrose. Secondly, you won’t find crystallized violets in Asda – or anywhere else that I have seen – but Waitrose do stock them in their baking aisle.
Price: The pears, lemon, chocolate, double cream and violets totalled £12.19, but please remember that Valrhona is tremendously expensive, costing over £5.00 per bar. The violets were also over £3.00, so if you were prepared to use cheaper chocolate and omit the violets, this would be a much cheaper option that I have outlined.
(The farm shop pears)
(The dark chocolate - Valrhona)
(The crystalized violet petals)
Method: Well, this is tremendously easy to make. In fact, it could almost appear in Nigella Express, so hassle-free is it. Making the pie gave me ten times more hassle, whilst the pears just got on with themselves really. It is almost more effort to peel, halve and core the pears than it is to do much of anything else. One starts by making a poaching liquid of water and vanilla sugar (or otherwise) and then simmering the pears in said liquid for 10 minutes per side. Apparently, one keeps simmering for 10 minutes, then turning and repeating until the pears are fully cooked, tender, but not soggy. Nigella isn’t much help by not giving even an approximate number of “turning times” (as it were), but it does all depend on many factors, such as the relative size of the pan and the pears themselves. I can only tell you how long mine took. I simmered them for 10 minutes cut-side down, then a further 10 minutes the other side and then a further 10 minutes cut-side down again until I was really happy with their texture. In reality, they were probably tender enough after 20 minutes simmering, but I didn’t want even one ounce of hard flesh. I wanted this to be a soft, enveloping, comforting dessert that I could quite literally sink my teeth into. And another upshot of this recipe is that you need to let the pears cool in that fragrant poaching syrup, which means that you can make them seriously in advance. Indeed, poaching the pears was one of the first jobs I did, whilst cooking the meat for the pie filling. I then left them to cool – lid on – for most of the morning.
To make life even easier for myself, I made the chocolate sauce after we had finished our main course. This is because it needs to be eaten hot, and therefore made at the last minute. To make life even easier for myself, I measured out all of the ingredients for the chocolate sauce into the saucepan into which I would later melt them, about an hour before we sat down to our main course. And the ingredients couldn’t be easier to prepare. Just chop some chocolate, measure out some sugar, tip some black coffee into the mixture and you’re away. Making the sauce is also child’s play – simply stir all of the ingredients together over a low heat and finally stir in the double cream at the end. It very quickly amalgamates together into a rich, thick and glossy chocolate sauce.
One other tip which you may or may not find useful – if you find a lull in your preparation and you, like me, are calmed by getting things ready early, then you could do what I did and get everything else ready way before you want to eat them. In actual fact, I arranged my poached and then cooled pears on a serving plate, drizzled over a little sauce, decanted some vanilla ice-cream into a serving bowl and stashed back in the freezer and scattered a decent number of crystallized violets into a small serving bowl. Then, right at the last minute, all I needed to do was to make the sauce (the work of minutes), and all was ready. Now, that is surely Express cooking!
To make life even easier for myself, I made the chocolate sauce after we had finished our main course. This is because it needs to be eaten hot, and therefore made at the last minute. To make life even easier for myself, I measured out all of the ingredients for the chocolate sauce into the saucepan into which I would later melt them, about an hour before we sat down to our main course. And the ingredients couldn’t be easier to prepare. Just chop some chocolate, measure out some sugar, tip some black coffee into the mixture and you’re away. Making the sauce is also child’s play – simply stir all of the ingredients together over a low heat and finally stir in the double cream at the end. It very quickly amalgamates together into a rich, thick and glossy chocolate sauce.
One other tip which you may or may not find useful – if you find a lull in your preparation and you, like me, are calmed by getting things ready early, then you could do what I did and get everything else ready way before you want to eat them. In actual fact, I arranged my poached and then cooled pears on a serving plate, drizzled over a little sauce, decanted some vanilla ice-cream into a serving bowl and stashed back in the freezer and scattered a decent number of crystallized violets into a small serving bowl. Then, right at the last minute, all I needed to do was to make the sauce (the work of minutes), and all was ready. Now, that is surely Express cooking!
(The pears after just a minute or two of poaching in the sugar syrup)
(Perfectly poached after 30 minutes)
Result: I don’t know about you, but I think that there is something rather lovely – in a Victorian tea-party kind of way – about such a delicately perfect laid-out dessert, in which there is a lot of a little, rather than a little of a lot. Yes, sometimes it is preferable to have a big, hunking homemade wodge of something or another, but there are also times when the small, the petite and the perfectly-formed is desirable. And I rather *like* the dolls-house notion of the way in which this dessert demands to be constructed on the plate, rather than chowed down upon. It is rather nice to help yourself to a spoonful (or two) of creamy white vanilla ice-cream, place a soft pear half on top, drizzle the whole with hot, chocolate sauce and finish off with a delicate scattering of bluish-purple violet petals. I don’t think it is one adjective too far to describe the constructed plate as beautiful. I especially liked the way in which the white of the ice-cream and the blushed gold of the pears were deeply contrasted by the almost malevolent swathing black of the chocolate sauce and the whole was brought together by those violet – almost deep blue – curled-in petals. And whilst we’re on the subject of appearance, I did think the pears looked fabulous. Their colour was a dusky pale gold, with a smooth yet dappled surface and the wonderful soft arch of each was glisteningly shimmering with the merest trickle of vanilla-scented thin syrup. The sauce also looked fantastic. It was deep, thick, velvety, smooth and very, very darkly glossy. I would go so far as to say that it looked as though you could stand your spoon up in it – which you nearly could! – and see your reflection in it – which you also nearly could. Having said all of this, I have seen pictures of poires belle Hélène in retro cookbooks and modern re-workings, in which the cook poached a whole, peeled pear, complete with stalk at the top. Personally, I preferred the look of the pears as they were. Firstly, halved, they were a breeze to cook and secondly, the whole poached pear to me is just too reminiscent of some elaborately concocted double-page spread in a “Good Housewife” magazine or similar.
But what about the taste? After all, you can’t very well usher out anything as old-fashioned as this if it doesn’t taste any good. And I am *very* pleased to report – believe me – that after a spell of unsuccessful recipes, this utterly hit the spot! I found it absolutely delicious. Probably my favourite part of the dessert was the pears. They were truly wonderful. Their texture was truly to die for. They were utterly soft and yielding, but not at all soggy, and even though Nigella says she has a soft spot for tinned pears, these were a world apart from anything you may find in a can. They really did have the softest, plumpest texture and they were so juicy and fresh. And the syrup has a wonderful way of making them taste emphatically like they should – the delicate, almost floral aroma of a good, perfectly ripe pear – yet at the same time transporting them to a whole new level of pleasure. Goodness – I adored these pears. I ate far too many – my only excuse being that they are – at the end of the day – fruit. They tasted heavenly. In fact, heavenly is the perfect adjective to describe them, because their light, delicate, almost floral and honeyed taste, coupled with the luscious, plump, juicy texture can surely only be the food of the Gods. In taste, as I say, they did taste emphatically of themselves, but there was an additional delicate sweetness, which wasn’t cloying, but lightened and sweetened the natural fruit and the vanilla in the syrup had also oozed its way into that succulent interior, further lightening and improving upon the natural flavour of the pears. And I must say now, that they were heavenly with the vanilla ice-cream. Because they were gorgeous in an unfussy, subtle way, I am sure that they would work perfectly with any cream-based counterpart. In fact, I must admit now to drizzling the syrup-doused leftovers with double cream and eating straight from the fridge. This did mean that they went perfectly with the ice-cream. I should perhaps have mentioned this in the “ingredients” section, but the ice-cream that I brought to go with this dessert was Waitrose’s “Organic vanilla.” And let me assure you, if you can’t be bothered to make your own – and what with making a pie complete with pastry, I certainly couldn’t – this must be *the* best substitute. The ice-cream was creamy and voluptuous and was a perfect partner to the delicate pears. The vanilla in the ice-cream also really complimented the vanilla in the pears, which pervaded its way into the luscious, juicy interior of the pear. It would be unfair – for a recipe which appears in the “chocolate” section, not to mention the chocolate sauce. Given the fact that it is similar in ingredients to a lot of the other chocolate desserts in HTE, I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. I think the reason for my adoration was two-fold. Firstly, I loved the fact that it is served hot – which I think really, really pays tribute to the cool, sweet succulence of the pears – and secondly I just think that it works better as part of this dessert. In texture, it is outrageously thick and heart-stoppingly velvety and glossy. In taste, it is very, very rich, strong and chocolaty. Because of the coffee, it is also a little bitter, but whereas I didn’t feel as though there was a place for show-stopping bitterness in the chocolate raspberry pudding cake, here I feel that it had a very necessary calling. Going back to my second point, I felt that this chocolate sauce just complimented the whole dessert so perfectly. The combination of cold, smooth vanilla ice-cream and hot, thick chocolate sauce is hardly a novel one – you don’t need me to expand upon that – but I thought that combination of light, cool, sweet fruit and heavy, rich, bitter chocolate sauce worked just as well. So perhaps it is not that I inherently dislike the intensely chocolaty, perhaps it is just that I think it at its best when its richness is balanced and offset by another element. I should perhaps mention the crystallized violets. Now, I actually really liked them. I have always liked the distinctive, floral flavour of violets – does anybody remember Parma violets? – and I thought that here they had their own role to play. Again, they sweetened and lightened the dark intensity of the chocolate sauce and worked perfectly with the pear and ice-cream. Okay, I could have lived without them had they not been available, but aesthetically I would have been sorry to loose that Victorian, old-fashioned, garden-flower feel which so complimented the rest of the dessert.
Another thing I loved about the whole dessert was the texture. Or should I say textures? I just loved the way that the textures of the various parts of the dessert complimented one another. I loved the cool, fat, creaminess of the ice-cream, coupled with the dappled, soft, juicy, moistness of the ice-cream and the thick, hot, liquid richness of the chocolate sauce. The violets gave a desirable crunch to the whole affair, which is another reason why I would be sorry to loose them.
Now, I know that there seems to be many and varied recipes for poires belle Hélène – some which omit the violets, some which omit the ice-cream in place of double or flavoured cream, some which replace the chocolate sauce with a darker ice-cream....whatever. Having given it some serious thought, I can only conclude that I can only stay faithful to Nigella’s recipe. As I have written, I just loved the tastes, the textures....everything about this fantastically understated dessert.
And whilst I’m discussing ecstatic culinary experiences, I should tell you that Fiona Beckett’s rabbit, bacon and mustard pie was exquisite. It really deserves a whole blog to itself. The rabbit was tender and beautifully flavoured, the filling was stunning and for once the pastry had just worked – in fact, Chris described my pastry as akin to “hot shortbread!” (I used vegetable shortening). That book has never let me down, and it is fast becoming my kitchen Bible (well, that and HTE at any rate).
(The ingredients for the sauce - chocolate, sugar, coffee - prior to melting)
(The chocolate sauce melted, thick and glossy - with the double cream stirred in)
Other person’s perspective: There is really little point writing Chris’s OPP. This is because he doesn’t really like pears, so didn’t give the pears a fair shot. And to be fair, although these pears were transportingly, elevatingly good, they still tasted like pears – albeit heaven-sent ones – and so it is no wonder he didn’t like them much. Okay, I can’t pretend to understand this unfair prejudice, but I can – at least – accept it. It is no wonder, then, that he didn’t like the chocolate sauce as he found it too bitter. I honestly think that to appreciate it, you must eat it with the pears, which explains his dislike. As for the violets and the ice-cream, he wasn’t really fussed about either – and developed quite an antipathy towards the violets – so all in all, this dessert didn’t hit the spot for him. A shame really, because I adored it.
(Close-up of our table - the crystalized violets ready for sprinkling)
(Another close-up - the gorgeous poached pears)
(And yet another close-up of the chocolate sauce!)
Future changes: Well, obviously I will be making this again, but only for myself. I wouldn’t change a thing to those gorgeous, sumptuous pears or to the chocolate sauce. I would be sorry to loose the violets, but I could cope without them and I even think that I could manage without the ice-cream. I must, must have the pears and chocolate sauce, however. There could be no compromise with these.
(Can I show you a picture of my rabbit, bacon and mustard pie?)
(Fiona Beckett's rabbit, bacon and mustard pie from "Meat and Two Veg" with "not-at-all-boring peas and carrots" from the same book, along with some steamed potatoes)
Rating: I award this 5/5 and since Chris’s perspective is just based purely on personal food preference and not the recipe itself, he is declining to vote, as it just wouldn’t be fair to this wonderful recipe. So, a 5/5 it readily deserves.
