Osmanthus Poached Pears

Another cooling & sweet dessert to cool you down! ^-* As I've plenty of dried osmanthus flower, so I've been exploring on recipes which uses this particular ingredient and I found this! :D I loves this sweet flowery tasty dessert when is chilled!

Recipe adapted from Food 4 Tots

Ingredients

• 2 large yellow skinned Chinese round shaped
• 25g dried white fungus (雪耳)
• 3 tbsp dried osmanthus flowers (桂花)
• 10gm seedless red dates
• 20gm sweet almonds (南杏)
• 10gm bitter almonds (北杏)
• 75gm rock sugar
• 1 candied dates
• 1.5 litres water

Methods

1. Rinse the white fungus under running water, followed by soaking in a bowl of water for an hour. Using a pair of kitchen scissors, trim out the hard yellow orange parts at the bottom and separate the frilly head of fungus into bite-sized pieces. Rinse, drain and set aside.
2. Skin the pears, core them and cut each one into 8 wedges, set aside.
3. Put dried osmanthus flowers into a sieve. Rinse them through running water and drain. Spoon it into a disposable tea or spice bag. Seal the bag and set aside.
4. Wash and remove seeds for red dates.
5. Rinse candied dates and both types of the almonds.
6. Bring the water to boil in a medium-sized pot. Add tea bag (step 3 above) and rock sugar to the pot, and turn heat down to medium. When the rock sugar has dissolved, have a taste and add more sugar if desired.
7. Add the white fungus, candied dates, red dates, and sweet and bitter almonds.
8. Simmer over medium low heat for 45 minutes to an hour. The pears are done when you can pierce through them easily using a sharp knife.
9. Let it cool in the pot for 1 hour. Fish out the tea bag containing the osmanthus flowers before serving. It can be served warm or chilled. For chilled, cool completely then refrigerate at least four hours or overnight.