Poached pears in chocolate sauce

Name: Poached pears in chocolate sauce
Yield: Serves 6
Ingredients: 100 g plain dark chocolate (with at least 70% cocoa solids), broken into pieces (I like Lindt); 4 tablespoons boiling water; 6 Conference pears, ripe enough to own that pleasant smell of nail polish remover; 2 bay leaves; 150 ml double cream; 6 shortbread biscuits, to serve; juice of 1 lemon; 200 ml water; 200 g caster sugar; 1 vanilla pod, split lengthways and seeds removed; 1 long strip of lemon zest, removed with a potato peeler; 4 black peppercorns; 500 ml Sancerre or other white wine

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

What to Eat Next

By Valentine Warner

Published 2014

About

I used to love tinned pears with instant rubbish chocolate custard at school. But that was then and this is a little more elegant.

Ingredients

2 bay leaves
4 black peppercorns
1 long strip of lemon zest, removed with a potato

Sauce
Dessert
Chocolate
Vegetarian

Method

Drop the bay leaves, peppercorns and lemon rind into a large saucepan and pour over the white wine and water. Tip in the sugar, then add the vanilla seeds, followed by the pod. Put the pan on the heat and bring to a very gentle simmer.
Meanwhile, peel the pears, leaving the stem attached. Very neatly cut out the little black core end from the bottom, then cut a