Poached Pears In Verbena Syrup: An Easy Recipe.

Lemon verbena is an aromatic plant that pairs particularly well with fruits such as peach, melon, or pear. If you want to make a light and deliciously fragrant dessert, here's an easy recipe for poached pears in lemon verbena syrup.

Ingredients

Here are the necessary ingredients to prepare poached pears in verbena syrup for 4 people:

4 pears
75 cl of water
75 g of sugar
2 sachets of vanilla sugar
1 handful of fresh or dried verbena leaves.
1 yellow lemon

Note: for this recipe, I used William pears but you can of course poach other varieties of pears, provided they are ripe but not too much! The degree of ripeness of the fruit is important so that the pears do not fall apart during cooking.

Preparation of light verbena syrup.

The preparation of a light syrup with reduced sugar content is the first step in this recipe for poached pears in verbena syrup.

1- In a saucepan, pour water with sugar and vanilla sugar.

2- Bring this mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar.

3- When the sugar is dissolved and the syrup becomes transparent, add the fresh or dried verbena leaves.

Note: The lemony scent of verbena will be even stronger if you use freshly picked leaves from your garden.

4- Let the syrup simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat and let the verbena leaves infuse for another 5 minutes in the hot syrup.

Preparing pears.

While the verbena syrup infuses, prepare the pears. For this poached pear recipe, it is simpler and quicker to cook half pears rather than leaving the fruits whole.

1- Peel the pears using a peeler.

2- Cut them in half and remove the core and seeds.

3- Lemon the half pears as you go with the juice of the yellow lemon.

This trick helps prevent the fruits from oxidizing before cooking the poached pears in verbena syrup.

Cooking poached pears in syrup.

1- Remove the verbena leaves before warming up the syrup.
2- Bring the verbena syrup to a boil again.
3- Using a skimmer, dip the half pears in the boiling syrup.
4- Cook the pears at a simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, turning them occasionally. The cooking time for pears poached in verbena syrup depends on the firmness of the fruit.
5- Check the doneness of the pears with the tip of a knife. The fruits should be tender without being mushy.
6- Turn off the heat and let the pears cool in their syrup so that they soak up the lemon verbena flavor well.

Tasting tips

You can serve poached pears in verbena syrup at room temperature, drizzled with their cooking syrup.

You can also prepare these poached pears the day before and let them marinate overnight in their syrup in the refrigerator.

For a prettier presentation, I recommend keeping a few verbena leaves and arranging two half pears per person when plating.