Overnight oats with cardamom-poached pears, peanut butter & granola

Ed Smith’s overnight oats features creamy oats, fresh and poached fruit and peanut butter. Plus crunch from granola and yogurt to bind it all together. Well worth the effort.

Ingreadient

• 125g caster sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla bean paste
• 5 cardamom pods, split and seeds ground
• 4 Conference pears, 1 roughly grated, core discarded
• 1 lemon wedge
• 150g porridge oats
• 300ml whole milk, plus extra to taste
• 1 banana, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp peanut butter, to serve
• 2 tbsp Greek yogurt, to serve
• 3 tbsp granola, such as No.1 Dark Chocolate & Sour Cherry, to serve

Step by step

1. The evening before your breakfast, measure the sugar, vanilla paste and cardamom into a small saucepan. Pour 600ml just-boiled water over the top and stir to dissolve the sugar.
2. Peel 3 pears (but leave whole), rubbing the flesh with juice from the lemon wedge. Pop the pears into the pan, then cover with a piece of scrunched up baking parchment and push down to ensure they remain submerged. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook (don’t boil) for 15 minutes, or until tender but not too soft.
3. Remove from the heat, cover with a lid and leave the pears to cool in the water for 1 hour. Transfer the pears and poaching liquid to a tall, thin container (so the fruit remains submerged and continues taking on the flavour of the poaching liquor). Refrigerate. In a separate container, combine the oats and 300ml milk. Stir once, cover and refrigerate overnight.
4. In the morning, give the oats a good stir – they will quickly become creamy – then add 50ml or so more milk to thin the mix a little, so that it’s loose (neither sticky, like wallpaper paste, nor runny, like soup). Stir in the banana and the remaining grated pear, then divide between 2 bowls, adding to the centre of each 1 tbsp peanut butter, yogurt and some granola. Add a few sea salt flakes to the peanut butter, then cut 1 of the poached pears into quarters, lengthways. Divide between the bowls and top with 1 tbsp of the poaching juices.