Butter and brown sugar baked pears with rice pudding
Conference pears are good for this as they’re slim and the right size for pears that are going to be served with rice pudding (you’ll just have eaten a lot of chilli). If you would rather do something easier then make the pears and serve them on their own with cream. A biscuit would be good alongside. Likewise, you can just make the rice pudding and serve it with quince, redcurrant or apple jelly. You only need a small amount of jelly for each person.
Overview
Prep time
10 mins
Cook time
3 hrs
Serves
8
Ingredients
For the pears
8 pears (not overripe and not too hard either)
45g butter, cut into small cubes
juice of ½ lemon
75g soft dark brown sugar
For the rice pudding
50g butter, plus extra for greasing
35g caster sugar
100g short-grain pudding rice
1l whole milk
150ml double cream
generous grating of fresh nutmeg
finely grated zest of ½ lemon
¼ tsp vanilla extract
Method
Step 1
Heat the oven to 190C/180C fan/gas mark 5. Halve 8 pears from stem to base. You don’t need to core them, and leave the stalks intact if possible.
Step 2
Put the pears in a roasting tin or a large gratin dish where they can all fit snugly in a single layer. If there’s too much room around them the sugar and butter that run off the pears can burn. Arrange them cut-side up and dot 45g cubed butter over them equally, squeeze over the juice of ½ lemon then sprinkle on 75g soft dark brown sugar.
Step 3
Bake in the oven. It can take as much as an hour for the pears to become tender and golden, but check every 10 minutes from 35 minutes onwards as it depends on how ripe they are. Baste with the juices each time.
Step 4
For the rice pudding, turn down the oven to 150C/140C fan/gas mark 2.
Step 5
Butter a 2-litre baking dish. Put all the ingredients for the rice pudding into a large saucepan and heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Simmer for 3-4 minutes, stirring all the time, until you can feel that the grains of rice have swollen slightly.
Step 6
Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and bake for 2 hours. By this time the rice should be cooked and creamy, but it should not be dry or overly sticky.
Step 7
Warm the pears in the oven then transfer to a serving dish. Serve the rice pudding in the dish in which you’ve baked it, with the fruit and all its juices alongside.