Vegan Mulled Wine Poached Easter Egg

Vegan Mulled Wine Poached Pear, Passion Fruit Puree, Coconut & Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta, Dark Chocolate & Red Wine Caramel. Cinnamon Tuile. Mulled Wine Reduction.

Happy Easter! My goal for this dish was to create a fun twist on the classic chocolate Easter egg without using a mold. This is a wonderful grown up version of an Easter egg using a red wine poached pear. It's a delicious and elegant reimagined Easter Egg. It's easy to make and I hope you will enjoy eating it as much as I enjoyed making it.

You can find the full story of the inspiration behind this dish here: theosfeast.com/post/reimagining-the-easter-egg

This recipe serves 6, but it's easy to add more servings. It takes approximately 2 hours of cooking time.

Equipment:

Digital Thermometer, or candy thermometer.

Vegetable Peeler

Pairing knife

Grape fruit spoon, or small egg spoon

Heavy bottomed pot

Slotted Spoon

Chef knife

Microplane

Not stick Frying Pan

Poached Pear Ingredients:

1 Bottle of Merlot Red Wine.

6 firm pears. Select pears that are firm and already egg shaped. Firm is better than overly ripe for poaching.

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2” piece of fresh ginger root, chopped

1 Vanilla Bean, split with vanilla seeds scraped, or 1 table spoon of vanilla Extract

5 whole cloves, or 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves

2 Cinnamon sticks

2 Star anise stars, or 1 teaspoon of ground Star Anise

3 Green Cardamom pods.

6 pears, pealed, cored and shaped like an egg using a sealer and Micro plane.

Juice of one orange

1 orange peele rind

1 cup of apple juice

Poached Pear Instructions:

Add the wine, and spices to a large pot big enough for the bottle of wine and pears.

Add the sugar and spices to the wine. Do not turn on the heat yet.

Core and peal the pears, use your knife, peeler and a micro plane to shape it to look like an egg.

Place the shaped pears into the wine as you finish them so the don’t go brown.

Set the heat to medium. Bring the pears just to a slow simmer. Do not let them come to a full boil. The slower they cook the more flavour they will have. They will take 15 - 20 minutes to poach, pending on the ripeness of the pear. Keep a close eye on them.

Once they are just getting soft, remove them and let them cool.

Place them in the fridge, sitting up, uncovered to cool and dry out.

Prepare the cold poached pears for glazing by setting them down on something that will slightly elevate them that is smaller than the bottom of the pear. Some ideas could be a small mini muffin tin, turned upside down, small shot glasses, a small ramekin or a spice jar. You will be pouring very hot caramel over each egg so you want to use something that can stand up to the heat, a plastic cup will melt. Use something that can be easily cleaned once the hot caramel sets. I use a silicone mini muffin mold turned upside down. I also place it in a parchment lined cook sheet.

If you are using a metal muffin tin you will want to spray it with non stick spray.