Poires au vin rouge

Based on the traditional recipe of pears stewed in Beaujolais red wine, chef Stéphanie Moreau creates a dessert that brings together three of Burgundy’s favourite fruits: the pear, the grape and the blackcurrant. From hearty stews to savoury cakes, wine seems to find its way into most recipes that originate in Burgundy, and that doesn’t stop at the dessert trolley. The traditional recipe, poires à la bonne femme, was designed to use up the pears that had not properly ripened and consisted of the fruit being boiled in sugar to disguise its grainy texture before wine was added for colour rather than flavour. During this process, the skin would go wrinkly, supposedly like an ‘old wife’, or ‘bonne femme’, which is how it got its name.

In this aromatic dessert, created by Stéphanie, the pears get a further boost in flavour by being marinated in wine for two days, along with citrus fruit, and cinnamon, which lend it a festive feel. As chef at the bucolic Moulin des Ruats, hidden in woods in the wildly beautiful Parc Naturel Régional du Morvan near Avallon, Stéphanie’s favoured method sees the pears gently infused with the wine, rather than boiling them in it. “It improves the taste of the wine,” she explains. Working at the cosy former watermill, Stéphanie has developed the dish into a sophisticated dessert that leaves its rustic roots firmly in the past. She serves it with a chocolate sorbet or ice cream, a red wine jelly and a tuile wafer that is made with one of Burgundy’s other key ingredients: blackcurrants. “You can use blackcurrant sorbet instead of chocolate to carry through the blackcurrant theme,” says Stéphanie, adding: “The tuile gives the dish an extra crunch, which works with the softness of the pears.”

This extra touch is a nod to the blackcurrants that were traditionally grown alongside the grapes by the wives of Burgundy winegrowers. While the main harvest was, of course, the wine, the blackcurrants were used to create the local liqueur named crème de cassis, which – like the wine –also finds its way into many a dessert in this corner of France.