The perfect finale to your Christmas Dinner.
Ingredients
- 1 l water
- 250 g caster sugar
- 1 level tablespoon agar-agar (vegetarian alternative to gelatine), per 200 ml of poaching liquid
- 4 conference pears (peeled and a little slice off the bottom so the pear can stand by itself own)
- 1 plum pudding
For the Sabayon Sauce:
- 3 egg yolks
- 50 g sugar
- 125 ml white wine or single malt whiskey
Method
- Boil the water and add the sugar until the sugar is dissolved.
- Reduce the heat under the syrup.
- When poaching, the surface of the syrup should be shuddering rather than breaking with a rolling boil.
- Place the pears into the syrup and allow to poach for 12 minutes.
- Turn off the heat and allow the pears to cool in the poaching liquor.
- Take 600ml (1 pint) of the cooled poaching liquid and put into a separate saucepan.
- Stir in the agar-agar, turn on the heat and bring to a gentle boil for 3 minutes until the flakes of agar-agar dissolve.
- Pour the contents into a serving dish, transfer into the fridge to set.
- Steam the plum pudding; we used a Green Saffron plum pudding which needed to be steamed for an hour. Allow the pudding to cool, in the mean time make the sabayon sauce.
For the Sabayon Sauce:
- Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a large glass bowl until it goes an off white colour. Dilute with the wine or the alcohol, whisking constantly, and pouring the alcohol in slowly.
- Place the glass bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.
- Whisk the mixture continuously until it increases to four times its bulk and is firm and frothy.
- Construction of the dessert:
- Crumble some slightly cooled pudding over the set pear jelly and spoon over the sabayon sauce and serve with some poached pear.
