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Red Wine Pears, Gingerbread, Red Wine Granita, Walnut Crumble
Recipe by Alla Wolf-Tasker
- Steps
- Ingredients
Steps
- Heat oven to 180C.
- Place wine, sugar, star anise, cinnamon and vanilla in a saucepan suitable for tightly fitting pears upright. Set over medium heat and cook, stirring, for two minutes or until sugar dissolves. Add pears, standing them tightly fitted and upright and bring to the boil. Immediately reduce to a low simmer and cover the saucepan with a piece of baking paper and a lid. Simmer until pears are tender, regularly spooning poaching liquid over pears while cooking, about 30 minutes. Transfer pears to a bowl and set aside, keeping warm.
- Strain out spices from poaching liquid, measure off 300 ml and set aside in the freezer. Increase heat to high and bring remainder of syrup to the boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the syrup thickens slightly, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
- To make the Red Wine Granita, add 30 ml water to the chilled poaching liquid. Transfer to a shallow tray and place in the freezer. As mixture begins to freeze, scrape with a fork to achieve a granita texture, return to freezer and repeat once more. Set aside in the freezer until needed.
- For the crumble, finely chop half the walnuts in a food processor until reduced to the consistency of ground almonds. Add the flour, butter and sugar and continue to blitz to a coarse or fine crumble mix, whichever you prefer. Roughly break the remaining walnuts with fingers or roughly chop with knife and stir into the crumble. Spread crumble mix on a baking tray and place in the oven to bake till golden. Remove from oven and set aside.
- To make the gingerbread, place butter, golden syrup and treacle in a saucepan and set over low heat. Add sugar and stir to combine. Sift flour, ginger and cinnamon together in a bowl. Add and milk eggs and stir to combine. Add melted butter/syrup mixture and stir to combine. Pour the resulting mixture into a cream whipper gun and charge with 3-4 bulbs and shake vigorously. Fill 4 greased plastic dariole moulds 2/3 full and cook in a microwave until risen and cooked through, about 30 seconds. Allow the sponges to sit for a couple of minutes before turning out. Set aside.
- To serve, place a warm pear on each plate. Spoon over reduced warm red wine syrup. Tear the warm sponges into approximately thirds. Place two quenelles of mascarpone on either side of the pear. Scrape some red wine granita around the pear and sprinkle with walnut crumble.
