Poached Pears in Red Wine

Fruit as a dessert.  We found ourselves entering into foreign territory with this recipe.  Dessert, for my family, brings about connotations of chocolate cake, candy bars or bowls of ice cream.  Fruit, seeming to be a paltry option, is one for which we heavily scoff - in part, due to the fact that we are sugar addicts and fructose is not nearly as sweet as the things we crave.  But, also, I think even more for me than for my husband, I tend to see dessert as a reward or occasional moment of weakness - in which case, fruit would never dawn on me as being either.  Fruit is the good stuff, the day-to-day food that we eat for health.  Craving it when our horns go up seems like a waste of good badness.  Or bad goodness.  Or, simply, wrong in either context.  But, new countries, new foods, all equates to new things.  Thus, I figured I would add this famous Dutch pseudo-side dish/dessert to our meal one evening.

Pears are a favorite, no matter what is done to them.  Poaching fruit seems to be a relatively easy way of adding a hinted undertone of flavoring to a common item.  And, with no great difficulty, it all turned out as planned.  Simple.  Elegant.  Food.    

Ingredients:
8 stewing pears
1 bottle of red wine
3 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 Tablespoon dark brown sugar
The grated zest of one orange
The grated zest of one lemon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3 to 4 drops of pink food coloring

Instructions:

1. Carefully peel the pears, leaving the stalks intact. Cut a straight slice off the bottom of the pears so that they can stand upright easily.
2. Tightly pack them into a large pot. They should fit snugly. Pour the wine to the tops of the pears. Add cloves, cinnamon sticks, sugar, zest, nutmeg and food coloring.
3. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat to a gentle simmer for 1 hour, or until soft but not mushy. Remove the poached pears carefully using a spoon -- do not lift by the stalks.

Even though it is still hard for me to classify this as a dessert - despite the better coaxing of Dutch culture - I embrace poached pears with a true belief that maybe someday, with enough repetition in action, I will seek this out in place of its less-healthy counterparts.  Perhaps.  As long as there is no chocolate in our house.

(The original recipe came from this link:  http://dutchfood.about.com/od/dessertssweets/r/PoachedPears.htm)