Spiced Wine Pears

Recently, my parents planted a pair of pear trees (hehe...pair o' pear). This year, they produced some fruit. They might not be the prettiest pears, but I knew I could turn them into something tasty. They were hard as rocks when they were first brought into the kitchen, but after a couple days they had ripened up a bit. I peeled them and sliced each one into about 8 slices. I put them in a saucepan with just enough red wine to cover all the slices. Then I added a generous amount of both white and brown sugar, some cinnamon sticks, some whole cloves and some nutmeg (yes, I put nutmeg in everything...what of it?)

I left the whole mess to simmer for roughly two hours. I stirred it regularly and enjoyed the rich and delicious smell that was filling the house. At the same time I was roasting a pan of vegetables so it had some weird competition.

The process was a little strange. I noticed it was getting a little thicker, but I really wanted it to get to a syrupy almost-pie-filling texture. And it made that jump in thickness surprisingly quickly at the end. I pulled out the cinnamon sticks and cloves (not wanting to make another mistake like I did with leaving bay leaves in the squash soup).

The pears ended up sitting in the fridge for a few days before we finally pulled them out to eat them. Since I had cooked them with pie filling in mind, I figured it would be best with some vanilla bean ice cream. I reheated the stewed pears and spooned it over the ice cream.

It was VERY rich and almost too sweet. I was thinking of spiced wine the whole time I was cooking it and that's what it ended up tasting like. The 'rentals also gave it a positive review. If I were to make it again, I would probably put less sugar in and/or add some lemon juice to cut the cloying sweetness.