Poached Pears in Honey, and Kaak d'Essaouira

We had a couple of friends over for dinner one evening, and the meal was Moroccan inspired. The starter was zaalouk - an eggplant and tomato dip with homemade moroccan bread (khobz). The main meal was a chicken tagine flavoured with chermoula and homemade preserved lemons... but I think the most interesting part of it all, which is the one I decided to actually blog about - was dessert.

I found some inspiration from this blog and saw her recipe for poached pears and figs in honey, and thought that would be quite delightful! But I also thought that a bit of crunchiness to accompany the softened pears would be nice... so after a bit more googling I came across these cookies called Kaak d'Essaouira, named after a coastal city.

A bit of a gamble to offer something that I haven't made before, but I had a good feeling about it especially after reading the recipe.

The pears were peeled and cored from the bottom, and poached in an aromatic liquid made of water, honey, crushed cardamom, 3 cloves, a cinnamon stick, and the peel of one lemon. When the pears were done, the liquid was left to reduce into a sticky syrup.

prepping the pears

green cardamom - before they were bruised a little bit

For the cookies, I had get orange blossom water from the shop. It proved to be an excellent addition to my pantry! Beautiful flavor, and smelled heavenly. Not to be overdone though, as I think too much of it may render something taste like soap! I used the recipe from this link but I halved the quantities. I had a bit of an error because I was supposed to use half a teaspoon of ground anise seeds, but ended up using a teaspoon of whole seeds.

orange blossom water - around $8 for this bottle (!)

A step by step procedure is clearly articulated in this link  so the photos below are merely for me to remember how I did mine!

i used the knife as a template for the length so I end up with similarly sized cookies

i used the back of the butter knife to create the ridges... although I think I should have spaced them farther apart

let them rest before popping into the oven.... meanwhile the pears were also done during this time and were chilling!

crunchy cookies, very tasty and great for afternoon tea

the finished product quickly went for a photo shoot before it was served to guests!

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