Almond Champagne Poached Pears

Adapted from this recipe:

1 bottle of almond champagne
1 cup water
1 vanilla bean, sliced & scraped
3/4 cup sugar
3 pears, cored and halved

Pour champagne into a 4 quart sauce pan with water, sugar, vanilla bean pieces and pulp over medium high heat to bring to a boil.

Decrease the heat to medium low and place the pears into the liquid, cover and cook for 30 minutes or until the pears are tender but not falling apart. Remove pears, and move to the fridge.

Remove the vanilla bean from the saucepan, increase the heat to high and reduce the syrup to approximately 1 cup of liquid, about 20 to 25 minutes - do not burn the syrup. Place the syrup in a heatproof container and place in the refrigerator until cool, approximately 1 hour.

Remove the pears from the refrigerator, spoon the sauce over the pears and serve.

The results:

Holy jesus. I've never had poached pears before, and I'm not really a pear fan, but dayum. Day-um. These were tasty. And that sauce. Oh the sauce. So sweet and almondy. And I'm definitely a huge fan of using vanilla beans, the taste is just doesn't compared to the extract. I feel like the extract is a sham compared to using the real thing.