Easy Low Cal Dessert

We are going over to some friends house this afternoon for Easter Dinner, and I volunteered to bring a dessert.
Knowing that there are nice pears available , and some of the people are watching their caloric intake, I needed a low cal offering

You might see a trend here now some times, sometimes not, but in the last couple of weeks it has been on "EASY". I get into ups and downs into the amount of time I want to spend making something, maybe the weather , maybe the season, maybe the appetite, maybe the lack of specialized ingredients.....eh who knows?

This will take about 45 minutes to make but it looks great and better yet tastes great.

It is simple, basic, and easy.
Braised Pears..........
Sort of Poached Pears,
Anyway they are pears that you let swim in shallow waters for about 30 to 40 minutes until ready, let cool, then serve either cool or at room temperature.

First of all you need some firm pears. You need firm ones because if they are real ripe or starting to get mushy after 30 minutes of a bath, they WILL become mushy..........mushy pears not a good thing, unless you are 95 years old and lost all your teeth.......not there yet, myself!

Wash the pears, and remove the center cores. You probably have a pear or apple de-coring device. It's the one that is waaay back in the junk drawer, sort of looking half way between a peeler and a device to remove cheery pits......
If you don't have one you can make one from a short piece of 3/4 inch copper water pipe, or just spend the 2 bucks and buy one. Who knows you may like the recipe and will want to make it again!

So, peal the pears with a vegetable peeler, be careful not to remove more than you need, then remove about 1/4 inch of the bottom of the pear so it will sit vertically in a pan without falling over etc, and then plunge the corer into the middle, twist and remove the core.
If you mad one out of a 8 inch piece of pipe you will need to ram a handle of a wooden spoon to remove the core from inside the pipe.


Yes you could use a 9/16 wooden electric drill bit and drill it out, but it becomes messy because of the speed of the drill and it flinging the pear parts all over. I have seen this done before and it is doable but the clean up takes 5 minutes.......

Now that you have all the pears, cored , sitting flatly on their flat bottoms, you are ready to make the bath water ( so to speak).
Take two to three cups of red wine, any will do, preferably something left over from a few bottles something that you will not use anymore, and toss that into a skillet.
Turn on medium heat and toss in 1 CUP of sugar, white or brown is fine.
One the sugar is combined with the wine and bubbling, place the pears into the bath, and start covering the pears with the bath juice. Do this once every 3 to 4 minutes .
You will notice that the liquid will start to thicken and become more and more like syrup.
Thant's the plan........
After about 25 minutes the syrup will start to be about right, and the pears should have taken on a nice garnet color.
Keep basting the pears.
Test one to see if it is become soft, by sticking in a small knife somewhere in the lower section, if soft then turn off the heat, let cool and that's it!

TO serve,
Place one pear onto a small dish or dessert glass, use the thick syrup to drizzle over, since it has cooled the syrup should be very syrupy.......
If you want toss some chopped nuts over it, or just add a little chopped mint........
Nice dessert, no butter, no flour, no fat just a little calories from the sugar, but very little.
Lots of nice taste........

Stuff you will need:

4 to 6 pears depending on # required.

2-3 cups of red wine
1 CUP of sugar

* you could add a dash of the following spices if you like for complexity.


Cinnamon
cloves
all spice
black pepper