I wanted to try making a desert in the slow cooker... poached pears is one of my favourite "puddings" and with the cinnamon and red wine it's got a festive flavour too.
The recipe didn't specify which variety of pear to use, so I just used conference pears as they are quite hard and I guessed they wouldn't disintegrate whilst cooking. I didn't have any oranges so I tried to use satsumas instead. The juice was not very strong and I found the pith almost impossible to remove. Instead, as a replacement for the orange I used the zest of a lemon and some orange juice from a carton. This worked out just fine.
Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to cook these. The wine, cinnamon and orange needs to cook on slow for one hour for the flavours to infuse. Then the pears are cooked in the juice for between 4-6 hours (I cooked mine for 4 hours) and after that you need to leave them to stand for a while without the lid on for the juice to become more syrupy.
I didn't mind the protracted cooking time. I was pottering around in the kitchen for most of the day any way. I also made some Amaretti Ice Cream specifically to serve with the poached pears.
These poached pears smell so wonderful and festive while they are cooking, like mulled wine!
These pears were beautiful...soft, sweet and very tasty. The syrup was not as "syrupy" as when I have cooked poached pears in a pan but still delicious with just the right level of sugar, cinamon, wine and citrus. I think the flavours are better preserved by slow cooking and I will certainly be making these again!
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