Vanilla Poached Pear Crumble

I am leaving with my sister for a 2 week backpacking trip in Borneo this coming Tuesday, and I decided it would be in bad form to leave my readers with my last post. I don't want to be [even more] responsible for spewing forth more anger and violence into an already crazy world. So I decided to leave you with this. Vanilla-y, crumbly, sweet, gooey pear crumble.


I forgot to put sugar into the crust, so I compensated by making a thick syrup out of the cooking juices of the pear and drizzling it over the crumble. Worked very nicely, and I'm keeping the left-overs for making vanilla lattes. However, this didn't turn out exactly as I expected, because despite adding a whole vanilla bean to poach with the pear [scrapped with pods thrown in], the vanilla scent was MINIMAL. I have no idea what went wrong, and if you do, please enlighten me.

Vanilla Poached Pear Crumble

Filling:

3 large pears or whatever approximate you deem fit, peeled, sliced and cored

1 vanilla pod

3 tbs sugar

Crust and Crumble:

One recipe of short-crust pastry, made to the crumbly stage. Rubbed in, water added but not kneaded. [refer here]

Handful of walnuts/almonds/pecans/whatever

2 tbs sugar

1 tbs cinnamon

Syrup:

Cooking juices

1/2 cup sugar

1. Poach pear, sugar, split vanilla beans and pod in just enough water to cover. Until tender.
2. Drain pears and leave open to dry out as much as possible.
3. Take 3/4 of short-crust pastry 'crumbs' and press into a pan/pie dish/whatever. Poke full of holes and bake at 180 degree celcius for 15 minutes or until cooked. You'll smell it when its cooked.
4. Mix remaining 'crumbs' with other ingredients.
5. Arrange pear slices over crust, spread crumble evenly over and bake until browned at 180 degree celcius.
6. To make syrup, simply reduce juice with sugar until desired consistency. I find reducing to be best done in a flat pan like a non-stick pan. Water evaporates so much faster!
7. Dig in! =)