Poached pears in white wine & cardamom

Cardamom is one of our favourite spices. Like allspice and cinnamon, it has its own sweetness — not in a sugary sense, but more in an aromatic way — but it gets an extra dimension when it appears in sweet contexts. This is why it makes total sense that walking the streets of east Jerusalem you are most likely to smell cardamom near coffee sellers. Arab coffee, fiercely bitter and strong, is traditionally served with very generous amounts of sugar and often flavoured with cardamom. When grin