This easy Middle Eastern inspired recipe is made with the delicious flavours of cinnamon, lemon, vanilla and the sauce it creates is dark and syrupy. It is delicious hot or cold with a dollop of ice cream, cream or yogurt.
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This really smooth and easy sorbet is a really refreshing end to a meal. You don’t need an ice cream maker to make it, as the technique I use makes it silky smooth. It tastes very french and delicately peary which reminds me of my holidays in France. You can eat it straight away or it freezes really well and stays soft enough to scoop. Like all ice creams and sorbets, it is better if you take it out of the freezer about 10 minutes before serving. Brilliant for using up a glut of ripe pears too.
This no churn boozy sorbet is based on the the delicious pear drop cocktail which is pear juice with vodka and vanilla. It’s such a brilliant combination of flavours I have made it into an easy gelato version which is perfect for valentine’s night or date night as it’s lighter than a traditional dessert, so you won’t feel like dozing off after dinner as you dim the lights and crank up the Barry White…
It can be made in advance and kept frozen till needed. It’s also very easy and quick to make, you just need a freezer and a food processor or a nutribullet. How to make the pear guitars is at the bottom of the page after the recipe instructions.
Happy date night!
Hurrah…it’s pear season. I think pears are fairly underrated, partly because they sit rock hard in fruit bowls and no one knows if and when they will ripen, and when they do ripen they start to become over ripe really quickly. Well now here’s an answer, so they don’t go to waste, I use them raw while they are still hard in salads or I roast them with vanilla, spices and honey and serve them as a dessert.
Most people opt for apples over pears but I kind of prefer pears. Like my pear salad, I sometimes like to use them as I would a vegetable and pay homage to the humble pear.
You can use soft or hard pears for this salad, either will do. Apart from tasting delicious, it also looks beautiful with the colour of the red cabbage.
I wanted to create a recipe that uses hard pears for salads as they are perfect in the same way as carrots and celeriac are. So I created this healthy, tasty salad and tested it on friends at dinner and they really loved it and wanted the recipe, and they are still talking about how delicious it is. The dressing is an unusual combination of flavours, like mustard and lime juice, but trust me, it works. You can use ripe pears if your pears are ripe, it’s still delicious, and it’s also amazing with shavings of pecorino. Pecorino and lime, who’d have thought? Perfect, too, if you want to try new flavours salad-wise.
Recipe
Serves 2.
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon Poppy seeds
3 firm pears cored and very thinly sliced (I leave the skin on but its up to you) they can be sliced lengthways or in discs
A round radicchio roughly shredded or chopped chicory
A sprig of parsley finely chopped
A sprig of chives finely chopped
1 teaspoon of maple syrup
¼ teaspoon of English mustard
1 lime, zest and juice
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
