Advertisement

Poached Pears Filled With Chocolate Hazelnut Ganache

Time1 hour 30 minutes
YieldsMakes 4 pears
Poached Pears Filled  With Chocolate  Hazelnut Ganache
(Los Angeles Times)
Share
Print RecipePrint Recipe

Every year chocolate is celebrated on Valentine’s Day for its sensual romantic symbolism, its power as an aphrodisiac to awaken slumbering passions. Its bittersweet complexity is as sharp and rewarding as love itself. But if an edible substitute for love is what you’re after, there are other foods that fill the void more easily and with less attendant baggage than chocolate.

Still, it’s easy to see where chocolate gets its reputation. Caffeine and sugar make it a stimulant rivaled by few other foods. It melts yieldingly at body temperature. Historically it’s been used to treat everything from poor appetite to mental fatigue, and heroes of children’s literature have self-medicated with the stuff to great effect. Harry Potter eats chocolate to ward off the chill caused by soul-sucking Dementors. Charlie Bucket drinks a nourishing draught from a warm chocolate river in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Now it looks as if every fantasy of chocolate as a health food might be true. Marcel Desaulniers, known for gratuitously sexy, truly dark chocolate desserts with names like “Chocolate Bypass Cake,” refers in his latest book, “Death by Chocolate Cakes” (William Morrow, $35), to the heartening results of a Harvard study in which candy eaters lived an average of a year longer than non-candy eaters.

Even more promising was the news a few months ago that chocolate contains some of the same antioxidants responsible for giving red wine and green tea their heart-healthy reputation.

Maybe in the not-too-distant future we’ll be reading about the “Chocolate Paradox,” as scientists scramble to account for the fact that people who regularly consume chocolate (along with lots of butter, sugar, cream and eggs-hey, we can dream!) lead longer, happier lives.

Which means that now is the time to share a chocolate dessert with your valentine, before it loses its cachet and becomes as romantic as a bowl of oat bran.

There’s no better meeting place for forks and spoons than the cream-filled center of a chocolate baba-a tender, subtly chocolate brioche soaked with rum syrup-or some other decadent confection.

On second thought, as good as these are, you’d better plan on making two-sharing might be hazardous to your health.

Advertisement

Ganache

1

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Toast the hazelnuts on a jellyroll pan until they’re fragrant, 10 to 15 minutes. Place them in a kitchen towel and rub them briskly to remove the skins. Finely grind the nuts with the sugar in a food processor.

2

Heat the cream to a simmer in a saucepan and remove it from the heat. Add the chocolate, stirring until it’s melted and smooth. Stir in the nuts. Refrigerate the ganache, stirring occasionally, until it’s cool but not firm, about 45 minutes.

3

Before filling the pears, whisk the ganache gently to aerate it until it thickens slightly and very soft peaks form.

Pears

1

Peel the pears, leaving the stems intact. Trim a thin slice off the bottom of each pear to give it a flat surface for standing upright on a plate. Using a paring knife or a melon baller, cut into the bottom of each pear and remove the core. Scoop out a small cavity in the center of each pear for the ganache filling.

2

Combine the wine, water, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon stick and vanilla bean in a medium saucepan and bring them to a simmer, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Add the pears and simmer gently until tender when pierced with a knife, 25 to 30 minutes. Allow the pears to cool in the poaching liquid, then refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes.

3

Remove the pears from the liquid, reserving 2 cups for the sauce. Pat the pears dry with a paper towel and pipe or spoon the ganache into the center of the pears. Refrigerate the pears until the ganache is set, about 30 minutes.

4

Bring the 2 cups of reserved poaching liquid to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Boil until the liquid is reduced to about 1 1/2 cups, about 5 minutes. To serve, stand a pear upright on a dessert plate and spoon a little sauce over it.

Reduced poaching liquid makes a sauce for the pears, which have a chocolate truffle-like center. You can poach the pears one or two days before you plan to serve them.