Vanilla Pear

Laurie and I managed to procure some ultra-high quality vanilla beans from Mom and Dad a while back. We have been trying to decide what the perfect application of said beans would be. Today we finally used one of them for a scrumptious vanilla pear dish inspired by Alton Brown. I say "inspired by" because his recipe calls for 750 ml of white wine and I guess we were just fresh out of it . His recipe can be found at the link below. I thought perhaps white grape juice would do and then I noticed that there was a similar recipe that called for almost exactly that (see the other link, below) so we used 4 1/4 cups of grape juice instead of the wine/water combination Alton uses. It was fabulous! Mint leaves or something like that for garnish would have been nice to make the presentation a little prettier, but the flavor didn't need any enhancements. At first you just tasted the sweetness from the grape juice/sugar syrup, but as it warmed up in your mouth (it is a refrigerated dessert) the other flavors jumped to the foreground: pear, grape, and a very subtle, yet delicious vanilla. The amount of vanilla was perfect--you knew it was there, but it didn't overwhelm the other flavors. Yum. If you can get a hold of some vanilla pods, I'd suggest this as a use for them. I think I would suggest not stopping at 4 pears, though, as the recipe calls for. You could easily double or triple that number with the same amount of syrup and feed a bunch of guests and let me tell you there will be some wow factor there! Next time I might try adding a 1/2 a peach (an idea from the similar recipe) and/or some vanilla ice cream along with some mint (I think that's what Alton used in his final shot) or other green to try and enhance the presentation--a lone pear doesn't look all that great by itself. Speaking of presentation, please admire my Photoshop enhancements of this picture. I've been reading a book about Photoshop and honing my skills. This was a fun little project that I was able to do with my new skills. I ought to show you the original, but then I'd have to point out everything I did, and that'd be a lot of typing and I don't think most of you readers would want to go through it all. Let's just say, other than the obvious black and white back ground vs. color foreground, I also enhanced the colors in the foreground and digitally polished a smear off the glass from when the pear first went in. OK, thanks for taking a second look :)

Alton's recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_32758,00.html
Similar recipe
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_18275,00.html