What else could I possibly follow roast partridge with?  It had to be pears.  In this case, baked pears with honey, marsala and bay from My Favourite Ingredients by Skye Gyngell.  I am loving this book so much; everything I’ve made has turned out beautifully and it’s just such an inspiring read.

This is a beautifully simple autumn dessert, requiring only the tiniest bit of effort on the part of the cook.  And honestly, chucking a few well-chosen ingredients in a dish barely constitutes effort in my book.  I did go the extra mile (or two) and picked up a jar of gorgeously amber honey from our local farm shop.  I was thrilled to discover that it was their own honey and relieved that the hives are nowhere near the shop itself.  I didn’t even know they had their own bees.  It’s quite a mild honey—compared to chestnut or eucalyptus—but still flavourful.

While at the farm shop I took the opportunity to check out the new plant and herb nursery that had opened behind it.  My attempt at rooting rosemary cuttings has failed to elicit even the tiniest root, even after two months, so I decided to just buy myself a rosemary plant.  Safely strapped into the passenger seat it drove around with me for the rest of the day before being repotted into a shiny new pot at home.

I picked up some almost-ripe comice pears at the supermarket—the farm shop had none—figuring that a little longer in the oven should still give me sweet, meltingly tender fruit.  The pears were all wrapped-up and ready to go in the oven long before it finished preheating!  Like I said, a very simple recipe!

Fifty minutes later and the pears were caramelised and sitting in a bath of golden-brown syrup, heady with the scent of vanilla and marsala.  As they cooled I basted them with the syrup, hoping for a toffee apple effect that sadly didn’t materialise, but I do think it helped keep everything succulent.

I served the pears with a generous spoonful of thick, thick, crime fraiche which played well against the sweetness of the pears and syrup.  It’s a cliché, I know, but it really did cut through the sweet stickiness of the syrup to make a beautifully balanced dessert.  Ice cream would kill this, I think.  I loved the smokiness that the marsala left behind in the syrup and there was also a subtle spicing from the bay as well as the nutmeg.  Maybe infusing bay into the creme fraiche would lift this dish even further?

This was the perfect ending to our autumnal feast and I’m pretty sure that I’ll be baking plenty more pears in the future.

Baked Pears with honey, marsala and bay

Serves 6 (easily halved)

Source: My Favourite Ingredients by Skye Gyngell

• 8 firm, ripe pears
• 600ml marsala
• 220ml fragrant honey, such as rhodedendron or a mountain or forest honey
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
• finely pared zest of one lemon
• sprig of bay leaves (about 4 or 5 leaves)

Preheat the oven to 220C (200C fan-forced).  Place the pears in a roasting dish, in which they fit quite snugly, with their stalks uppermost.  Pour over the marsala and drizzle over the honey, then add the rest of the ingredients, pushing them down into the liquid.  Cover tightly with foil.

Place the roasting dish on the middle shelf of the oven and roast for 20 minutes.  Remove the foil and bake, uncovered, for a further 20 minutes.  The pears should be soft and the skin slightly wrinkled.  Allow to cool to room temperature.

Serve the pears on individual plates with the marsala and honey syrup spooned over. Creme fraiche works very well here.