Poached vanilla pears. The orange "bible".

It was April 2002 and Nick's sister was getting married in Melbourne. Nick thought it would be a good opportunity to impress his bride to-be (our wedding would be in September, just 5 months after!) by showing her a bit of Australia, the country where she would move in the future; sooner than she thought.

We started our adventure in Sydney. The Harbour Bridge was spectacular and I was excited to be in the city that celebrates the first New Year's Eve in the world. I always watched Sydney's famous fireworks on the Television Espanola while waiting for our turn in Madrid. From Sydney, we went to Canberra for a very short visit. It was so quick that the only thing I remember was the sign "Welcome to the Australian Capital Territory". But I also remember to have seen lots of dead kangaroos on the side road. When I saw the first one driving down the freeway, I couldn't help but saying "Nick, stop! aren't we going to bury the poor animal?"  Nick nearly crashed the car he was laughing so hard.

Canberra has a bad reputation around Australia (I like it, to be honest) so Nick wanted to "hide" it from our trip. He didn't want his bride to be to change her mind about leaving Spain for good to follow him.

The journey by road was too long for me, 9 hours and nothing interesting to see except a metal dog on top of a lunchbox somewhere in between Canberra and our destination, Melbourne.

During those days we spent in Melbourne, I met the rest of Nick's family, as many of them already had been to Spain to visit him (and some to check his new Spanish girlfriend).  Nick's sister in-law, Emily, invited us to her apartment in the campus of the Melbourne University. I was so impressed with the  dinner, simple and delicious, that my first thought was "I need to learn to cook like her". She read my mind as we were leaving, Emily gave me this huge cookbook of someone called Stephanie Alexander, with lots of recipes, hardly any pictures, and in ENGLISH! and then I thought "First, I need to learn English".

Who would it thought that 10 years later I would work for Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Foundation in a primary school in Canberra.

Emily told me the "The cook's companion"cookbook she gave me was known as the "bible" in any kitchen. Indeed, it was and still is in mine.

I made this recipe in memory of that beautiful dinner I had in Emily's University apartment. She made this dessert for us.

Poached pears

Recipe of Stephanie Alexander

• 1 litre light Sugar Syrup
• juice of 1 lemon
• 4 cloves
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 4 pears

1. Sugar syrup (light): heat two parts water to 1 part sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved. The syrup should barely move during this process.
2. In a saucepan, bring syrup to simmering point with lemon and spices (I also added some star anise).
3. Peel pears leaving stems on but cut the hard core end. Stand the pears upright in syrup, then cover with a round of baking paper nicked with scissors, so that the stems can be pocked through, and cover the saucepan with a lid.
4. Simmer very slowly until the pears are tender, it could take long depending on variety and ripeness of pears.
5. Leave to cool in the syrup and serve at room temperature ( it is delicious with vanilla ice cream).
6. My note: Put the remaining liquid into ziploc bags and when cool, freeze for later use.