This time of year, nothing says, “I love you” more than spending 10 minutes in the kitchen reassembling canned goods to look a fancy pie. Or like the quivering muscles of a freshly skinned angel. Look, Dean, the Men of Letters didn’t leave much for Castiel to work with. If he wants to use the kitchen to play act some kind of cathartic revenge on the angels who keep stopping by to borrow a cup of prophecy before torturing him, well, just remind yourself it’s pie. He says he made it for you. Hell, he may even believe that. Shut up and get a fork.
Castiel’s Torture Porn Vegan Pear Tart
- 2 16 oz cans of pear halves in lite syrup
- 1 tsp red food coloring
- 4 tbsp vegan butter (such as smart balance) OR 2 tbsp salted butter
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp/1 shot ginger liqueur OR 1 tbsp chopped candied ginger
- ½ tsp powdered cardamom
- ½ cup fresh cranberries
- 1 sheet thawed puff pastry
Start off by draining 1 cup of pear syrup into a large bowl. Add the red food coloring to bloody it up. Right now, it looks like bad fake blood from your seasonal Halloween store. Don’t panic and add real blood.
Ease the pallid white pears into their colorful bath. Cover the dubious mix with plastic (or just put a plate on top of the bowl) and let the pears and food coloring hang out on your counter for an hour. If you’re pinched for time, you can leave them in the fridge overnight. It doesn’t help, but it also doesn’t hurt.
When you’re ready to make your tart, grab an oven-safe skillet. This means you can take it off the stove and put it in a hot oven without melting off a plastic handle. Dean hates it when you do that.
Melt your Smart Balance over medium heat. (I’ll be honest here. If you’re not vegan, use real butter. The Smart Balance makes for a nice tart, but it doesn’t caramelize up the way dairy butter does.)
While the fat melts, spread out some paper towels and rest your pear halves on them to dry out a tad. If you’re bored, feel free to arrange them in the anatomical pattern of shoulder and arm muscles.
While your pears dry, head back to your skillet and add the brown sugar, ginger liqueur, and ½ cup of the red pear syrup. (If you substitute candied ginger pieces for the ginger syrup, increase your pear syrup by 2 tbsp.) Grab a wood or silicone spatula and stir and stir and stir until the thin red liquid takes on the thickness of freshly spilled blood and the brown sugar is completely dissolved. Once you have a nice pot full of suspiciously red liquid, add the cardamom powder and stir it in.
Toss the cranberries in the pot and give them one more hearty stir. From here on, stir occasionally over a medium heat until the liquid is reduced by half. You’ll know you’re ready for the next step when you’ve passed the thickness of blood and your pot is coated in a thick, viscous liquid that clings greedily to both the spatula and sides of the pan.
(Not all abandoned secret lairs are equal. An all metal, oven-safe skillet is fastest and easiest, but if all your skillets have nonstick coating and plastic handles, go ahead and follow all the steps above, but have a well oiled/buttered 9 inch round cake pan waiting nearby. You can pour the skillet sauce into your cake pan and proceed from there.)
Once your liquid is suitably thick, use your wood spatula to push all the cranberries to the outside edges of the pan. In the middle, neatly arrange your pear halves, cut side up, so they look like a spiral of artfully packed red meat. If you have a space in the middle, cut one pear into a circle just big enough to fill it.
Grab your pallid, skin-like sheet of puff pastry and trim it into a circle that’s just a smidge larger than your pan. If your pastry isn’t large enough, gently cajole it with a rolling pin until it stretches to fit.
Lay the puff pastry on top of the fruit and use your fingers to tuck it in around the edges, creating the crust.
Pop it in a preheated oven and bake at 400F/200C for 30-35 min or until the pastry is puffed up and a turns a rich golden brown. A little bloody sauce might try to escape the sides. Don’t worry. You’ll soon take care of any interlopers.
Take your skillet pie out of the oven and then do the hardest thing – leave it alone, untouched, for at least half an hour. You want it to cool down and gel into place before you mess with it.
While you’re waiting, find a plate slightly larger than your skillet or cake pan.
When you’re ready to free Schrodinger’s Pie from it’s mysterious pastry entombment, use your already dirty wooden spatula to loosen the edges. Take a deep breath. You’re bold. You’re daring. You can do this. Put the plate on top of the skillet and flip it over. If your floor isn’t covered in proto-pie, patiently wait until it feels like everything in the skillet has dutifully plopped onto the plate before lifting it up.
At this point, you’ll want to cry. It doesn’t look anything like the photo that goes with this recipe. But don’t despair! None of them do at this stage. All skillet pies need to have a little cosmetic work done in order to look their best.
Grab a tablespoon or wide serving spoon. First, carefully push the cranberries to the outer edge of the crust where they’ll most look like unclassifiable viscera. That’ll give you a canvas of what looks like bloody peeled skin. Use the wide part of the spoon to jostle all your pears into position so they line up neatly. You could make them into anything you want. Maybe a pretty rosette, or maybe a graphic representation of your heavenly brother’s meat suit. Use your imagination.
Let’s be honest – you’ve already touched all this food – so gently run your fingertips over the top of the pears in order to clean up any unsettlingly gory bits.
This pie is best served the temperature of human blood, alongside some refreshing non-dairy ice cream or whipped topping. However, you can make this up to 3 days before serving. If so, wrap it tightly in foil or plastic and refrigerate. The sauce will congeal as the tart cools to the temperature of a morgue’s corpse locker. That makes it easier to cut, but dulls the flavor slightly, so sneakily sprinkle a pinch of salt over the top of the pie before serving cold. People won’t consciously taste the salt, but it will enhance the flavor.
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