Michel Roux Jr’s poached pears with chocolate almond sauce

What pears should I use?
You can poach any pear. My preference is for williams pears, but conference or any pear in season will do. They should be a little bit firm, not ripe and ready to eat.

How do I peel them neatly?
Peel the pears with a good peeler as opposed to using a knife. You can rub them with a clean scourer to smooth the edges if you want to – but you’d probably only do that for a restaurant, not if you’re cooking this at home.

What should I look for when cooking them?
They mustn’t boil. When you’re making your syrup, it’s brought to the boil, but your pears just gently simmer. Use a skewer or point of a knife to test that they’re soft all the way through, but not turning to mush. Never fear, though: if they go mushy, you can still eat them – it becomes a compote!

Why cool the pears in the syrup?
It carries on cooking them gently and means they get all the flavour from the syrup.

What other fruit can I poach?
You can more or less poach any fruit in this manner – do apples in exactly the same way. Or get a fresh pineapple, trim it down, make big chunky rings or quarters and poach them.

Why is there no cream in the sauce?
The idea is not to make it too rich. There’s just a little bit of butter, which gives a nice gloss. Some chocolate sauces have milk or cream added, but for me that’s too heavy and cloying. It’s more like a ganache, whereas this is a proper sauce. You get the most amazing true chocolate flavour – sometimes if you add cream or milk, it masks the flavour of the chocolate.

What chocolate should I use?
A high cocoa solids bitter chocolate – 70-plus per cent. And use good quality cocoa powder too, not sweetened cocoa powder.

Does it matter when and how I add the chocolate?
? Boil the water with the sugar until it’s dissolved, take it off the heat and immediately add your chocolate – grated, broken into pieces or as pistoles or buttons – with the butter and whisk in.

Are there any pitfalls to avoid?
Add the chocolate off the heat, otherwise it’ll catch and burn. Don’t put the sauce back on the heat – just keep it in a warm place. If it starts to set, gently melt it in the microwave or over a double boiler.

Help, I’ve got leftover sauce!
It’s great on vanilla ice cream – and spread on toast.