Poached Pears for Dessert

One evening in April Greg was watching Good Eats (Alton is his hero...) and this recipe was featured. I had purchased some vanilla beans from Penzeys Spices well over a year ago and knew this would be a wonderful use for them. Unfortunately, they were pretty dried up (I stored them too long), so I couldn't really scrape the insides, but I still cut it in half and tossed the whole thing in the pot. We really liked the pears, so I will try this again with fresh beans.
Vanilla Poached Pears
Recipe courtesy Alton Brown, 2005
Prep Time: 10 min
Inactive Prep Time: 1 hr 0 min
Cook Time: 55 min
Level: Easy
Serves: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 (750-ml) bottle white wine, Riesling or Viognier (I used Chateau St. Michelle Riesling)
1 cup water c.
5 ounces vanilla sugar, approximately 3/4 cup
1 whole vanilla bean, split and scraped
4 firm Bartlett, Anjou or Bosc pears, peeled leaving the stem intact (mine are Bosc)
Directions:
Place the white wine, water, sugar and vanilla bean and pulp into a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil.
Core the pears from the bottom.
Decrease the heat to medium low and place the pears into the liquid, cover and cook for 30 minutes or until the pears are tender but not falling apart. Maintain a gentle simmer.
Remove the pears to a serving dish, standing them upright, and place in the refrigerator.
Remove the vanilla bean from the saucepan, increase the heat to high and reduce the syrup to approximately 1 cup of liquid, approximately 20 to 25 minutes. Do not allow the syrup to turn brown.
Place the syrup in a heatproof container and place in the refrigerator until cool, approximately 1 hour.
Remove the pears from the refrigerator, spoon the sauce over the pears and serve.