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Poached Pears in Marsala

The critical failure with a poached pear is in the eating. When presented with a whole one, the only thing to do is grasp the top with thumb and forefinger and cut down with a spoon. But the pear almost inevitably slides away out from under your spoon, slopping sticky juices and crème fraîche everywhere.

I think the answer must be to core the pear pre-poaching, or to poach the pear in segments.

Anyway, however you eat poached pears, they are just bloody delicious and this recipe is really terrific – the sauce you get out of it is wonderful and sticky and if you have any leftover, keep it to throw over some ice cream at a later date.

An important note on this is that you need your pears to be really quite ripe for this to work. The poaching can only soften up a not-quite-ripe pear so much – so this isn’t a dessert you can do if you’re just ordering everything off Ocado, because who knows what sort of state they’ll turn up in.

Poached Pears

For 4

 4 pears, doesn’t really matter what sort, peeled and cored or cut into segments, depending on how you wish to resolve the presentation question

 30g butter, at room temperature