Collect together your equipment (see Recipe Notes below) and ingredients.

Preheat the oven to Fan Oven 130°C/150°C/300°F/Gas 2. 

First make the rice pudding: mix the pudding rice and the milk in a baking dish and stir well.

Cook in the centre of preheated oven for 2½ hours or until the rice is cooked through but the pudding still jiggles quite a lot in the centre. It will continue to cook once you have removed it from the oven and become much stiffer.

Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Poach the pears and make the vanilla syrup: dissolve the sugar in the water and then add the wine and vanilla bean.

Add the peeled and cored pear quarters to the liquid.

Top with a cartouche and cook for 10 – 20 minutes or until the pears are soft. (See Recipe Notes for details on how to make a cartouche.) Alternatively, cover with a lid.

Remove the pears from the liquid, drain on kitchen towel and slice.

Return the pan to the heat and reduce the liquid to a thick vanilla syrup.

Make the Salted Caramel Sauce: heat the butter and sugar in a small saucepan over a moderate heat, stirring continuously until the sugar has dissolved and is mixed thoroughly with the butter.

Stir in the cream and salt and heat gently to warm through. Taste and add more salt if necessary. (Be careful it will be very, very hot.)

Make the rice pudding posh: when the rice pudding is at room temperature, remove the skin from the top and discard - or eat!.

Using an electric whisk, beat the cream and icing sugar in a mixing bowl until it reaches soft peaks.

Fold ⅓ of the cream into the rice with the vanilla paste.

Fold in the remaining cream.

Assemble the puddings: divide the rice pudding between the serving bowls.

Pour over some Salted Caramel Sauce

Slice the pears and add a few slices to each dessert.

Drizzle over the hot vanilla syrup