Ingredients for 4 people :
- 4 big pears, ripe and tasty
- 1/2 lemon
- 70 gr [21/2 oz] sugar
- 25 cl [8 fl oz] water
- 8 vanilla ice cream balls
- 200 gr [7 oz] black chocolate
- 2 Tbspoons sour cream

Recipe :

1- Peel the pears and rub them right away with lemon to keep them from getting dark ; cut them in halves and take the core away with a pointed knife.
2- In medium heavy saucepan, pour the water, sugar, and the juice of left lemon, mix together and bring to the boil ; let simmer for 3 minutes, then put the pears in, cover with a lid and let the fruits poach for 5 minutes, turning them upside down once or twice. Strain (but keep the juice) them and let them cool down.

3- Display two half pears in each of the rib dish.
4- Cut the chocolate in small squares and put them in a small heavy saucepan with 4 spoons of the pear juice from cooking. Melt the whole over a low heat, stirring non stop with a wooden spoon until smooth. The chocolate must not stick to the pan.
5- When the chocolate is ready, quickly put 2 balls of vanilla ice-cream on each pear.
6- Add the sour cream to the chocolate. Pour it evenly on top of ice-cream in each dish and serve immediately.

TRICK : you can drop steps 1 and 2 and buy canned pears. This dessert can then become very easy to make and the special "last minute friends over" ; you can impress a lot by "improvising" this type of dessert...

You can chose to serve the chocolate separately in small saucers.