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Puffed pears with chocolate and olive oil sauce
Serves 4 Desserts and puddings
For the pears
- 4 firm pears
- 320g block vegan puff pastry unsweetened almond milk, to glaze
- 40g demerara sugar
For the basic poaching liquid
- 200g unrefined caster sugar
- 500ml water
- juice 1 unwaxed lemon, plus a strip of its zest
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1⁄2 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
For the mulled wine poaching liquid
- 150g unrefined caster sugar
- 500ml red wine
- juice 1 orange, plus a strip of its zest
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 3 cardamom pods, cracked
- 1 star anise
- 4 cloves
- pinch nutmeg
For the sauce
- 100g dark vegan cooking chocolate
- 4tbsp olive oil
- pinch sea salt flakes
Method
Peel the pears, leaving the stalks attached. Choose whether you are making the basic poaching liquid or the mulled wine version. Either way, place all the poaching ingredients together in a saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the pears to the pan and simmer very gently for 10 minutes, or until just soft to the tip of a knife. Turn the heat off and let the pears cool in the liquid. Store in the liquid until needed.
When you are ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Roll the pastry out into a long, thin rectangle around 5mm thick, then cut it into 1.5cm-wide strips. Cut the very bottom of each pear away, so they can sit up straight. Starting from the bottom, wrap each pear in a tightly spiralled strip of pastry. You may need to join 2 or more strips together to complete each pear, but this is easily done by dabbing the ends of both with a little almond milk.
Once all the pears are wrapped, brush them lightly with almond milk and scatter over the demerara for crunch. Transfer them to a baking tray and cook in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden. When ready, leave them to rest for 10 minutes, which gives you just enough time to make the sauce.
Break the chocolate into small pieces and place them in a saucepan. Add the olive oil and 60ml boiling water. Swirl and roll the pan so that the hot water starts to melt the chocolate, but resist the temptation to mix or whisk it. It might need a little more heat to keep it going, so place the pan over a low heat to give it a nudge. Don’t keep it on the heat for too long and don’t let it get anywhere near boiling.
When the chocolate seems to have almost lost it shape, you can use a metal spoon to stir it together. It should form a smooth, glossy sauce. Add the pinch of salt and serve immediately, spooning a pool of sauce onto each warm plate and sitting a pastry-wrapped pear on top.
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