Pears and pomegranates for Easter

We celebrated a second Easter at Towerwater without friends or family. Celebrating on our own feels quite normal by now with the pandemic into its second year. With news of death caused by Covid as part of our daily lives, one can easily allow oneself to become very morbid. We have decided that we will do our best to survive this pandemic. Following the basic rules, we have managed to survive unscathed this far.

One good thing the pandemic has taught us is that there is no better time to live than right now. Do not save the best wines, food, and experiences for special occasions. Life is a special occasion. We only live it once and it is unpredictable. We celebrate Towerwater every day and with special occasions like Easter we put in a bit of extra effort.

Traditional pickled fish

We enjoy celebrating traditions and two weeks before Easter we pickled fish in preparation. On Maundy Thursday Keith baked a dozen hot cross buns for the Easter weekend. Good Friday was celebrated with pickled fish and fresh hot cross buns, in the Cape tradition. Easter Sunday we would normally celebrate with a leg of lamb, but scaled down for two, I prepared slow roasted lamb shanks instead.

With the fresh picking of Hereboontjies, I decided to make “sousboontjies”, a traditional bean salad. The pomegranate tree in the orchard was covered with oversize blood red pomegranates. Finding a few late pears on the tree, I was inspired to use both these fruits in a Rick Stein inspired dessert. I decided to make pears poached in red wine with pomegranates.

Poached Pears in red wine and pomegranates

Ingredients:

4 pears, peeled and cored leaving the stem intact
1 cup of pomegranate arils
500 grams of castor sugar
750ml red wine
1 cinnamon stick
4 whole cloves
5 fennel seeds
1 fresh bay leaf
1 sprig rosemary
150g fresh ginger
1 lemon
1 orange

Method

Zest half the orange and half the lemon. Squeeze the juice of the orange and lemon.

In a pot, bring the wine, citrus zest, ginger, herbs, spices, sugar, and pomegranate arils to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Strain the liquid and return to the pot.

Add the pears and citrus juice to the pot and simmer over a low heat for 45 minutes, making sure that the whole pear is covered with the liquid.

Remove the pears from the liquid and set aside. Simmer the sauce until it has a syrup consistency.  Strain through a sieve.

Pour the syrup over the pears and serve with cream.

The fragrance of spices filled the house on Easter Sunday. The spicy pears echoed the fragrant pickled fish and spicy hot cross buns. The two of us enjoyed lunch at the eight-seater table and a balmy breeze came in through the ‘new’ front door and left the house through the old front door. Through the open top of the stable door, I could see lazy autumn oak leaves floating down to the lawn.

As we celebrate the resurrection, we celebrated the restoration of human dignity and destiny. We were reminded that even this pandemic will pass.