Un-Poached Vanilla Honied Pears

Scott does the work.

Clean up the pears: peel and cord.

Recipe:

Coring the pears. Be careful!

• 4 pears
• 4 dashes of cinnamon
• 2 vanilla beans (1 per bag)
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons of honey (1 tablespoon per bag)
• 4 tablespoons of butter (2 tablespoons per bag)

Aside from the executive work our guest chefstar Scott Peabody tackles— he also happily cleans pears up with the vigor of a stodge making ambrosia in the kitchen of Mount Olympus.

In this component, Scott is looking for a fleshy and more mellow bite to tie together the bright flavors of the Ginger Honied Carrot to the savory squab.

Season pears and halve vanilla bean.

Bag the pears.

After he peels, halves, and cores the pears, Scott dashes them with cinnamon. Then he slices the vanilla beans in half and smears the aromatic seeds all over the fruit.

He seals the pears in the vacuum bags with butter, honey, and the shells of the vanilla beans. They are put into the water bath at 85° C for two hours.

Carmelize the pears in their own juices and butter.

Until they look like this.

Afterwards, the pears get browned in our Michel (the unisex French name we have for our cast iron dutch oven) with the juices from the ziplock bags.

Our kitchen immediately transforms into a grand patisserie as the intensely satisfying vanilla and butter fragrance cocoons us. Mmmmm.

After carmelizing, add reduction.

The entirety of the reduction of butter, honey, and pear juice is poured over the browned beauties. To take a bite of this custardy and rich result is to be immortal.

Up next: squab breast!

Carrot puree and un-poached pear.