The Pear Tree

The pear tree in the garden is laden down with fruit.

We don’t know what variety of pear it is, but we know that we can cook them. We’ve already had some poached in red wine, cooked by the mother of a friend. And last night, I tried out a recipe from Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries: poached pears with ice-cream and chocolate sauce. Very simply poached in a sugar syrup with a vanilla pod – but they tasted delicious.

The next recipe for pears that I might tackle is Pear and Almond Tart from Amanda Hesser’s The Cook and the Gardener. But I probably need to take a deep breath, it’s a traditional French recipe that looks complicated and time-consuming. That’s one thing that makes me favour Slater’s recipes – they seem simple, yet they deliver excellent results.