Simmered Pears in Red Wine.

Winter side dish or dessert.
Serves: 2
Difficulty: Easy
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:
- 8 firm cooking/dessert pears (in Holland we use Gieser Wildeman or Saint Remy pears),
- bottle of red wine
- caster sugar ( I use 10 dessert spoons of sugar, but you can add more (or less) if you like)
- 2 cinnamon sticks,
- Rind of halve a lemon or 400 ml. orange juice

Method:

1. Peel the pears, leave the stem and don’t cut them (if you want, you can slice the bottoms off to help them to stand up easily in the pan or when served).

2. Pour the wine into a large saucepan. Stir in the sugar. Put the pears into the pan and add the orange juice and cinnamon sticks. Bring to the boil and then turn down the heat to a simmer. Put a lid on and cook for 45 minutes or so (Gieser Wildeman or Saint Remy pears take longer – 90 minutes or so), until beautiful red and soft but still retaining their shape.

3. When you eat them as a side dish, eat them hot!(Delicious with roasted potatoes) If you want to use them for dessert, let them cool in the liquid. Serve with cream, or mascarpone, or just plain vanilla ice-cream and some port-wine or some of the liquid

Enjoy!

Tip: you can store these pears in your freezer (store them in a container with the liquid)
Tip2: Don’t throw away the liquid….it’s very tasty and you can drink it or use it as a sauce

Spicy Sprouts

Sounds disgusting? Try them...scrummy!

Ingredients

Sprouts, as many as required
garlic
chilli - dried or fresh
butter

Method

Boil the sprouts in salted water until almost cooked - they should still be firm but not rock-hard
Drain and leave to cool slightly

Melt the butter in a pan and add the chill and garlic - both to your own taste. Stir for a minute.
Add the sprouts and stir fry for a couple of minutes and then turn the heat right down and leave them to finish cooking for 5 minutes....stirring from time to time.

Serve!

Bacon and Spinach

I found the basics of this recipe when I was giving a Thanksgiving dinner and wanted some traditional American recipes. It's really easy and quick to do and you can vary it according to taste. The flavours all infuse and it's delicious!

Ingredients

1 onion
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
8 rashers of bacon, roughly chopped
1/2 bag of spinach
1/2 pint single cream
Milk
Butter or oil
Pepper

Method

Roughly chop the onion and gently fry in some butter or oil in a saucepan. Once softened, add the crushed garlic and cook for a few minutes.

Add the roughly chopped bacon and continue to fry for a few minutes. Add the single cream and black pepper and gently simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes. If it thickens, add a little milk to increase the liquid. It should still be thick, but not glutinous.

Tear the spinach and stir it into the mixture. Cover the pan and gently simmer for about 5 minutes.

Serve!

You can adapt this recipe as you want. If cream is too rich, use just milk and thicken it with some cornflour. You can add cheese or use leeks instead of onions. I also use cheap cooking bacon rather than expensive rashers, it does the job just as well! You can also make this well in advance and leave it cool, then just re-heat it when you need it.