When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time canning fruit with my mom and sister. A mainstay was canned pears in sugar syrup: we had an absolutely freakishly giant Bartlett Pear tree, and I don’t know how many jars of pears it yielded, but it was a LOT. Enough to get us through the winter and then some.
To be honest, though, I never really loved the tasted of the canned pears; they were kind of bland to me. Fast forward to a couple of years ago when my friend Marie introduced me to how they put up pears for the winter in France–poached in wine, sugar, and spices. Now we’re talking.
I do a red and a white version. Either one is great–served refreshingly ice-cold after a summer dinner with some crumbled amaretti, or heated up with the syrup reduced and poured over vanilla ice cream in the winter.
There’s not really a set recipe: a bottle of wine (minus a petite glass for the chef–I mean, you gotta make sure it’s not corked!) will fill up a liter jar for the most part; I find about 8 pear halves work nicely for that size of jar. Pour the wine in a 3-quart pan and put as much sugar as you like, depending on how ripe your pears are: I usually do 1/4 C. Go sparingly on the spices: for white I like a couple bay leaves (ooh, or rosemary–that’s good stuff!), a cinnamon stick, some allspice berries or pink peppercorns, and that’s about it; for the red I do a mulling-spice profile (you can throw in some orange peel as well–tastes great and looks pretty in the jar). Simmer the pears in the wine syrup until they’re almost tender because they’ll cook more in processing. Then, load them into hot, sterilized canning jars (top off with boiling water if you need to) and process according to directions for your altitude: I process for 20 minutes at 4,500 ft. elevation.
The Rookery 